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VENUS VICTRIX 


% of a T37om4tt 


BY 



HELEN MATHERS 


'T OTHER DEAR CHARMER 


AUTHOR OF 

“ HEDRI,” “ WROSTELLA’s WEIRD,” ETC. 



NEW YORK 


UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY. 

5 AND 7 East Sixteenth Street 
Chicago : 266 & 268 Wabash Ave. 




/ 




I 








-^' 2 ' 




Copyright, 1892, 

BY 

UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY 


[A// rights reserved. \ 


I 


VENUS YIOTRIX. 


CHAPTER I. 

The post-mortem was over. 

They had drawn the linen up to the royally beau- 
tiful face upon which was stamped a look of tri- 
umph that rose above the mortal agony of her pass- 
ing, as though in the very act of her defeat by 
death she had wrested to herself a higher victory 
that had made the pale King’s of no effect ; a thing 
null and void. 

They seemed unable to take their eyes from her, 
these grave doctors whose cruel work was just done, 
and I knew that her witchery was as potent, and her 
power of drawing them as great, as when, in all the 
pomp of her laughing, goddess-like loveliness, she 
had drawn men after her as honey draws flies, so 
that Venus Victrix, as she had been in life, in death 
she was Venus Victrix still. Even old Dr. Du Pre, 


6 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


who surely knew her well enough, was under the 
charm, and he sighed impatiently as he turned 
away, fixing upon me a glance that spoke sternest 
inquiry and disgust, then followed by the others, 
who looked at me with equally hostile eyes, he 
passed into an adjoining room, and I was alone. 

Alone with my accuser — alone with the silence 
that was a more puissant accusation against me, 
than if the whole world had shouted itself hoarse in 
denunciation of my crime, and I was young, strong, 
with hot life tingling in my veins, ay, and for which 
I would fight to the very last, though her dead hand 
strove to clutch me down into the nothingness in 
which she herself lay. 

What if she had broken my life once— did I not 
set my teeth hard, battle with my despair, overcome 
my disgust for “ the trivial round, the common task ” 
that no love could ever now illumine, and out of 
the poor shreds of such an existence as she had left 
me, build up a useful career that was at least sweet- 
ened by the self-respect that is the reward of all 
strenuous honorable endeavor ? 

An accident, which is but another name for Fate, 
had sent me, out of all the women in the world, to 
be the sole nurse and attendant of this woman, who 


VENUS VIGTRIX. 


7 


had stolen my lover from me, yet knew me not ; it 
had been from my hand alone that she had eaten 
and drunk, my hand that had tended her, as, in all 
the stony immobility of paralysis, she lay before me, 
but with brain action clear, subtle, ay, and of such 
virile strength that she had been able to carry out 
unaided a scheme in which she counted the sacrifice 
of her life as nothing, so she might keep us two for- 
ever sundered. 

She was dead — and pity for her in my heart there 
was none. For most dead people we can be sorry, 
death has passed a sponge over their misdeeds, and 
all is forgotten. But here, the evil had not died 
with the dead ; like the writer of a corrupt book, it 
lived after her, and its consequences would go on 
forever and ever. 

And what had I done that she should so have 
cursed me ? I, who had found it even in my heart 
to forgive her, who through the best, the divinest 
instincts of my nature had been betrayed into a 
position which alone could have given her the power 
to wreak such a fiendish vengeance upon me ? 

Ignorantly I had come into the house of the self- 
tortured, God-stricken woman, and of my own free 
will, and through pity for him and for her I had re- 


8 


VENUS VICTEIX. 


mained, and for this error of judgment, or triumph 
over self — which you will — I was now about to re- 
ceive my wage, and it was her hand that thrust it, 
overflowing, plenteously, into mine. I drew near 
her and looked and looked at her as she lay on the 
bare table, her grave-clothes disposed about her like 
royal robes, for neither death nor that death in life 
in which alone I had known her, seemed to have 
power to take the seal of sovereignty from her, and 
a sudden sense of my own insignificance seized me. 

What was I that I should dare to cross the thresh- 
old of that kingdom of love out of which she had 
thrust me? She had been his wife, and he must 
have loved her after a man’s fashion, and what 
woman could dare to stand up beside her ? As if 
for answer I glanced round the great room that 
might have been decked for its present occasion, so 
white it was, pure white everywhere that it did not 
gleam mother o’ pearl. 

The bed glistened like an iridescent shell under 
its canopy of white brocade, upon the frothed up 
snow of the cambric and lace below which she had 
lain in all the pomp of her young, fresh beauty, and 
later in the stony semblance of death, the very flower 
lustres in the yoom were white, and nowhere was 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


9 


harsher coloring to he found than in the shell tints 
of the furniture, and perhaps the rich heap of opal 
rings lying on the table — the only jewels she ever 
suffered to break the whiteness with which she had 
loved at all times to surround herself. 

The mirror, framed in and flanked and surrounded 
by all the silver paraphernalia of the toilet of Venus, 
reflected, besides the silent flgure on the table, a 
small slight shape at which I glanced inquiringly, 
asking why it exhibited none of the signs of fear 
and horror natural enough, surely, to the oc- 
casion ? 

I moved a step nearer and the steady eyes in the 
glass met mine with imperturbable calm. The 
mouth was Arm even to hardness, and if the colorless 
cheeks and dark circles under the eyes affirmed me 
but mortal, the spirit within overrode the weakness 
of the flesh and bid deflance to the fate that was 
rushing on me. 

“ Heaven,” I said aloud, “ what have I done that 
you thus pursue me ? From my youth up I have 
struggled to follow the good, resist the evil, and the 
few prizes for which I fought have been won by 
hard work, with neither friends nor luck to help 
me. You struck me to earth, I rose again, first to 


10 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


my hand^ then to my knees, at last to my feet, saw 
my independence, and now you strike me once 
again, and threaten to deprive me of — life. You 
yourself inspired in my heart the divine quality of 
pity, of forgiveness, that kept me here when wisdom 
bid me depart, and to your merciful promptings 
alone is due the position in which I find myself to- 
day. And though you repented now, and sent down 
an angel to my relief, he could not save me.” 

A door opened sharply behind me, and this dead 
woman’s husband came in, crossing swiftly over 
to me. 

“ Do you know what they are saying ? ” he said. 
“ That you killed her — yoic ! ” 

He shook my shoulder in the vehemence of his 
passion, then, as I answered nothing, his face 
changed, and he bent down to look with keen 
scrutiny in my eyes. 

“ The old spirit,” he muttered. “ But your hand ” 
— he took and chafed it between his two strong 
ones — “ is cold.” I drew it away and locked it in 
its fellow behind my back. 

“ They only say what the whole world will say,” 
I replied, “what you yourself would say if you 
were not — prejudiced.” 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


11 


“ Say that I did it myself,” he said roughly, “ or 
at any rate we two together, not you alone.” 

“ No,” I said, “ you did not do it. We were locked 
in here together — two women — and one of us — 
died.” 

“While you were asleep,” he said, doggedly; 
“that is what I have been telling those fools in 
there — somebody got in — hasn’t she enemies 
enough ? and in the dark she probably thought it 
was you, giving her medicine, and the thing was 
done in a moment.’* 

“ But it was not dark,” I said ; “ a night-light was 
burning. And how could anyone get in with locked 
doors ? ” 

“Hid themselves probably before you locked 
them,” he said impatiently. 

“ Then how get out without unlocking them ? ” I 
said. “ No, no ! You came to fetch me ! ” I added, 
moving towards the door. 

“ Yes.” 

In turning we had both come face to face with 
her, and a spasm of ungovernable hatred convulsed 
his dark, strong face. 

“ You think you have separated us — but you have 
not ; you shall not,” he said, addressing her, loudly. 


12 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


defiantly, so that he might easily he heard in the 
next room. 

“ Are you mad ? ” I cried in a vehement under- 
breath ; “ won’t you leave me at least a chance for 
my life ? You make me despise you ; a man should 
have self-control, and you have none. Each word 
you speak in my self-defence hut damns me the 
more. Your vehemence supplies the one needful 
motive for a crime at first sight incomprehensible ; 
and from such a partisan may God deliver me.” 

“ Nurse Gray,” called Dr. Du Pre’s stern voice 
from the threshold. 

I went on the instant, and Hardress Norton strode 
step for step with me. I felt that I could have 
killed him as he stood shoulder to shoulder with 
me before my accusers. I met only harsh avenging 
glances as I looked from one to another, then Dr. Du 
Pre said : 

“ You are aware that Mrs. Norton died from the 
administration, accidental or otherwise, of prussic 
acid last night ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ You do not know how such poison came to be 
administered ? ” 


“ No.” 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


13 


“ You are sure that you did not give it in mistake 
for a sleeping draught ? ” 

“ Sure.” 

“ The door was locked when you discovered her 
death early this morning ? ” 

It was.” 

“No one could possibly have had access to the 
room during the night ? ” 

“ No one.” 

“ She appeared in her usual condition when you 
retired to rest last night ? ” 

“No. She was usually asleep when I go to bed, 
last night she was awake. She refused to have her 
sleeping draught, and said she would call me in the 
night when she required it.” 

One of the doctors whispered something to Dr. Du 
Pre, who then said : 

“Is it possible that anyone was hidden in the 
room without your knowledge ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ There is no wardrobe — no screen ? ” 

“ The wardrobe was locked. The highest screen 
in the room is not over four feet.” 

“ Did you look behind them when you went to 
bed?” said Dr. Du Pre, quickly. 


14 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


“ No.” 

One of the men, stern and hard-featured, looked 
at me with a slight unbending of his brows, and a 
little more as if I were a human being, and not some 
noxious beast. 

“ A kneeling person would be quite hidden,” he 
said. “ Could anyone have got into the room that 
night without your knowledge ? ” 

I considered. 

“It is possible, but most unlikely,” I said. 
“ Lydia had already brought up the things for the 
night ” 

“ Who is Lydia?” 

“ A housemaid. The only other person save Mr. 
Norton and myself who was ever suffered to enter 
the room.” 

Dr. Du Pre shook his head, scouting the idea 
of Lydia’s instrumentality in the affair. 

“ A fool and an automaton,” he said, “ without 
the brain to conceive or the nerve to commit such 
a crime. And I am sorry to say, that besides the 
presumptive evidence against you. Nurse Gray, I am 
in possession of something far stronger, which I will 
come to presently.” 

Hardress laughed. 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


15 


It was at me and not at him that Dr. Du Pre 
looked when he again spoke. 

“ When I was summoned hastily this morning to 
Mrs. Norton, I found her dead, as I had expected, 
but the cause of death, instead of being a second 
paralytic stroke was — poison, and in examining her 
I found between her nightdress and the pillow — 
this.” 

He took from his waistcoat pocket a small phial, at 
sight of which I started violently, for I had last 
seen it in my writmg-case, where I had locked it 
safely away with — other things. 

I passed my hand across my hrow, thinking that 
in truth I had gone mad at last. 

“ You have seen this before ?” 

“Yes.” 

“ It belonged to you ? ” 

“ It did.” 

Was it my voice that spoke ? Was it Har dress’s 
hand that prevented my slipping like water to the 
ground ? 

“I refused a certificate,” resumed Dr. Du Pre, 
heavily, “ and ordered a post-mortem. Gentlemen, 
you know with what results. To-morrow a coro- 
ner’s inquest will be held, and the three persons who 


16 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


had access to Mrs. Norton’s room will he cross- 
examined. Until then,” he looked at the man who 
stood beside m^ with an expression of strongest rep- 
robation, “ it will be your duty, sir, to guard against 
the possible escape of Nurse Gray.” 

“ She shan’t escape.” 

The stubborn voice, the hand that gripped my 
shoulder, might have been that of a jailer indeed — 
but more than the harshest execution of justice 
did r fear Hardress Norton then. 

“ It will be desirable,” said Dr. Du Pre, with ever- 
increasing harshness of look and voice, “ that Nurse 
Gray shall have no opportunity leaving these rooms 
to-day.” 

“ She shall not,” said Hardress ; then, straighten- 
ing himself up, “neither will I.” 

Dr. Du Pre’s eyes flashed. 

“ I will make it my business that she lias no such 
chance,” he said. “Since you, sir, whose duty it 
is to avenge the inhuman murder of your helpless 
wife, display the most extravagant affection for her 
presumptive murderess, it is for others to take the 
necessary steps for preventing the defeat of justice.” 

“ Do,” said Hardress, calmly ; “ give her in charge, 
and do your best to hang her for the final extinction 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


17 


of a three parts dead body, a body that once had 
power to destroy two lives — this woman’s and mine 
— and commit the most hideous som murder ever 
known.” 

“ So you admit in so many words,” said Dr. Du 
Pre, “ that there have been passages of love between 
you and this woman who stole to your wife’s bed- 
side under the guise of a nurse, and your whole 
attitude blazes out the fact that you love this woman 
still, and that you rejoice over the removal of your 
wife as the obstacle to your plans ? ” 

“ Enough,” broke in Hardress, sternly ; “ you talk 
as a fool of things of which you know nothing. And 
you are not a magistrate, I believe, and as such 
empowered to put us on our defence. You have 
done your duty, now go.” 

As Dr. Du Pre turned silently away, followed by 
his coadjutors, I could not bear the whole weight 
of condemnation his whole figure conveyed, and I 
sprang forward, intercepting him at the door. 

“Sir,” I said, “you know, I suppose, only the 
worst of me. Before God, I am not the thing that 
you suppose.” 

He put me by without a word or a glance, and 

passed out. I stood gazing at the shut door, then 
2 


18 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


turned and looked at the square-shouldered outlines 
which stood out sharply against the light, dominat- 
ing everything. 

“ I am not a hypocrite,” he said, “ or a liar. Do 
you expect me to say that I am sorry ? Sorry ! 
Does the freed galley-slave curse his liberty ? And 
I am free, Lyndsay, free ! ” 

“ Yes,” I said with intense bitterness, “ and I am 
practically a prisoner. What you are pleased to 
call your love has made a rope with which to hang 
me. Not even the evidence of the bottle that held 
the poison is as damning as your attitude towards 
me .... but who took that bottle from my desk ? 

It was locked up with — with ” and swift as the 

thought that struck me, I ran out of the room. 

Through the gloom that was fast blotting out 
the whiteness of the dead woman’s chamber, I made 
my way to the little clothes cabinet that I had 
called mine, and easily found the desk that I had 
left locked, but which now opened readily enough 
to my hand. It was empty — the packet of letters 
from Hardress Norton that I had rashly kept through 
so many years was gone. 

I stood still, scarcely breathing, as I realized in 
its entirety the ghastly plot that had been conceived 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


19 


to ruin me, and which she had deliberately forfeited 
her life to carry out. But who had been her instru- 
ment ? Though her hram might devise, her hand 
was powerless to carry out the scheme, and save 
Lydia, the dull almost half-witted woman who held 
her in obvious terror, there was no one who could 
possibly be fashioned into her tool. 

“Lyndsay,” cried Hardress’s voice from the 
threshold, and I went slowly back and stood before 
him. 

“ The letters are gone,’' I said, with stony calm, 
“ the letters you wrote me five years ago, that I 
kept, like the madwoman I was, and brought here.” 

“ Then you did love me all the while ? ” he cried, 
passionately, triumphantly, and I half turned my 
head to where that white thing glimmered coldly 
in the dusk, as if it, too, must hear him. 

“ What is that to you ? ” I cried, fiercely. “ Go 
away and leave me. If you are a man leave me.” 

“ I will leave you,” he said, coming close up to 
me, and peering down on me through the dusk, 
“ my poor little girl, but I will come back, and I 
will bring food that you must, shall eat.” 

“ Go then,” I said, so gently that he thought me 
broken down at last and compliant, and he went. 


20 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


Then I sprang to the door, and as I drew the bolt 
across it, felt the key turn in the lock on the other 
side. 

But I knew that Hardress’s hand had not turned 
it. 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


21 


CHAPTER II. 

“ When ye’re done and finished your wark, 

(Blaw, blaw, blaw winds, blaw) 

Come back to me and ye’ll get your sark 

(And the wind has blawn my plaid awa’.”) 

I WENT to the window and looked out. 

In the Park beyond, in Prince’s Gate below, the 
lamps were lit, and between them the cheerful 
traffic of life went to and fro, soothing me with its 
murmur, as any sounds of human life will a solitary 
suffering soul. 

Seldom indeed had I found time during my three 
months’ residence in the house, to stand here and 
watch the work-a-day world on this side of the 
Park gates, the summer-day life on the other, for 
body and soul had been absorbed in the fierce 
demands made upon them by the tyrant to whom I 
had been summoned in so violent a hurry that I 
did not even know the name of my charge when 
Dr. Du Pre brought me to her side. 

“ I want a nurse who is a miracle,” he said grimly 


22 


VENUS VICTEIX. 


to the matron of the hospital, when he rushed in ; 
“as immovable as a rock, complaisant as a fool, 
with the patience of Job, and the constitution of a 
horse. Have you ally such person ? ” 

“ What is the case ? ” said the matron, dubiously, 
then turned to look questioningly at me, as 1 stood 
(having just come in) behind her. 

“Total paralysis of limbs. Head as clear as 
yours or mine — or clearer. Young. Beautiful. 
Very rich. Fiendish temper. Wears out every 
soul who goes near her. Nurses won’t stop — ser- 
vants afraid to approach her — husband at wit’s 
end. He’s with her now. Will pay anything to 
get someone who will stay.” 

The matron looked at me again. 

“ What about night- work,” she said. 

“ There’s none. She sleeps w'el I — under opiates. 
There’s a maid to do everything that’s required. 
Now then can you supply me ? ” 

“Let me go,” I whispered in the matron’s ear. 
My life had been too easy of late, I wanted the disci- 
pline of some tough, disagreeable work, such work, 
as scourges out thought and leaves only a longing 
for rest. 

“Very well,” she said, “if it is too hard you can 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


23 


always come back,” and in less than ten minutes 
I was driving rapidly to my destination in Dr. 
Du Pre’s carriage. 

It was a June afternoon, and the contrast between 
the errand upon which I was going and the pride of 
life that rioted beneath the trees in the Park, smote 
on me forcibly as we passed through. 

“ Oh ! it must be hard to drop out of it all, out 
of the movement, the mere joy of living, to be 
confined, as it were, in one’s own body, crying 
aloud perchance to God that he would relieve you 
from it.” 

“ Is he good to her ? ” I said, thinking aloud. 

Dr. Du Pre turned and looked at me very oddly. 

“ If yoic are good to her,” he said, “ look on your 
shoulders every day for wings. I can’t say I ever 
saw any on his. But he does his duty. Here we 
are.” 

He sprang out and I followed him into the house, 
and up the stairs. He opened a door, motioned me 
to remain outside while he went in, and shut it 
sharply behind him, but not before a woman’s voice, 
a voice with the true virago note in it, gave a slight 
foretaste of what lay before me. 

He came back almost immediately, and as I en- 


24 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


tered, a man’s figure passed quickly out at a distant 
door, and I could have found it in my heart to 
smile, in such a hurry was he, and so delighted to 
be off-duty, after the manner of selfish man. 

And so eager was I to see this woman that I 
scarcely noted the strange beauty of the room and 
the very wantonness of wealth around me, never 
pausing till I was face to face with her — and then 
it was but for a moment I saw her, for the thick 
darkness of a winter’s night closed around me. 

“ Faint ? ” I heard a voice say from a great dis- 
tance, and felt a hand on my wrist, which I thrust 
violently from me, then ran, tripping over the fur- 
niture, towards the door. 

Dr. Du Pre caught me outside the threshold, and 
looking stern and angry, said : 

“ How’s this ? Don’t you obey matron’s orders ? 
And you’ve seen worse sights than this before. 
Here you are, and here for the present you’ll stop.” 

He took me by the shoulders, pushed me into the 
room, and locked the door on me. 

As I stood there, trembling with amazement, fear, 
pain, and a very fury of jealousy that shook me like 
a leaf, a voice from the distant bed called out im- 
periously : 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


25 


“ Come here ! ” 

In the silence that ensued I found myself examin- 
ing and appraising with curious exactitude the sur- 
roundings of the woman who was calling me. Of 
whatever sins you might accuse her, or perhaps by 
reason of those very sins, lack of taste was the last 
fault of which she would be found guilty. 

Her voice was as the voice of one who said, “ I 
call unto one and he cometh,” and to another “ Go 
and he goeth,” and I could have laughed aloud at 
the thought of how I was summoned as servant in 
the house of which I should have been mistress, and 
by the very woman who had usurped my place. 
Then shame seized me, for with all its fury it was a 
helpless voice calling from a helpless body, powerless 
to enforce obedience from me or any other, and a 
sudden revulsion of pity shook me from head to 
foot. 

Might I not forgive her now that God had taken 
her punishment into his hand? This was not the 
woman I had passionately envied, hated, been 
curious about ; hut a broken creature who had no 
friends, though she had never in all the pride of 
her godless triumph stood in such need of them. 

If this woman had hurt me greatly, God had hurt 


26 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


her more, punished her more than she had ever 
punished me, and my wrongs faded away in the con- 
templation of this awful ruin of fleshly pride and 
ambition. 

I could not see her from where I stood, as far as 
possible away from her in the vast room, for the 
foot of the shell-like bed hid her, but as I drew near 
I saw the long length of rigid limb upon which the 
satin quilt lay stiff as grave clothes. I thought of 
the Egyptian mummy at the feast, and trembled. 

“ Why don’t you come when I call you ? ” she said 
furiously. “ What else are you here for, I wonder ? 
Give me some of that Burgundy and don’t spill it, 
as those other fools generally do.” 

When I had given her the wine, she lay rolling 
her head restlessly to and fro on the pillow, and 
looking from time to time at me. 

“ Can you dress hair well? ” she said, abruptly. 

“ I dress my own,” I replied. 

“ And very badly you do it too,” she said, rudely ; 
“ but then it’s of very different quality to mine. I 
hate dark hair — it always looks dirty to me. You 
had better take off your bonnet, and then you can 
dress me.” 

Dress you ? ” 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


27 


“ Don’t stand staring like an idiot ? I mean my 
head of course. Oh! here you are! (to someone 
who had entered by a door behind me). Would you 
believe that if Dr. Du Pre had not locked this 
woman in, she would have run away ? A pack of 
cowards they all are, running away from a helpless 
woman.” 

The mordant voice — a voice that seemed to stop 
and stay every human impulse to her as it arose — 
pursued me as I moved away, trembling, and with 
an upleaping prayer that I might be so altered he 
would not recognize me. 

“ You must be kinder to them, Sabine,” he said 
in a low tone, the tone of a man tried beyond his 
strength, and having reached almost the snapping 
point of endurance, and without even the echo of 
love in it. 

She murmured something, I could not tell what, 
and, startled, I turned to see if that summer s^ eet 
voice was hers, and saw that she was covering 
every inch of his face with soft, quick, passionate 
kisses, crooning over him the while, like a mother 
over her child. 

A deadly sickness took hold of me, then jealousy 
fiercely stabbed me through and through as with 


28 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


a knife. Whatever she was, he was hers^ and she 
loved him. Not because he was rich and in every 
way desirable had she stolen him from me, but simply 
and purely for love. 

I stood looking at one of the pictures on the 
wall, seeing nothing, only stupidly asking myself 
how, if I let my self-control go thus early in the day, 
I proposed to carry this business out to the end ? 
It was almost impossible that he should not recog- 
nize me. Instinctively I drew down the veil over 
my hospital bonnet, and at the same moment he 
called me, and I went at once and stood before him. 
His weary eyes met mine without a spark of recog- 
nition in them. Had I indeed altered so much in 
the past five years, or was my dress so complete a 
disguise to me as an entirely new body ? 

And if I had altered, so had he. The face and 
limbs were the presentment of Hardress Norton, 
but the soul that gave them life and individuality 
was gone. 

“ Nurse,” he said kindly, and then I saw that he 
held a telegram, “ I have just been summoned to 
my mother, who will not, I fear, live very long. I 
leave Mrs. Norton in your care and hope ” 

“ She is an old woman,” struck in Mrs. Norton, 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


29 


violently. “One expects old people to die; and 
what good can you do by going ? She’ll die fast 
enough without you.” 

A shade of disgust — no more — crossed his weary 
face ; he was evidently used to her. 

“ I will do my best,” I said, only desiring that he 
might do as he wished, and resolving that I would 
go away on his return. 

He started violently at first sound of my voice, 
and now looked at me eagerly, intently, then with 
keen disappointment, for I had hardened my heart, 
and it was only an expressionless mask that gave 
hack his glance through the veil. 

“ Thank you,” he said, with all his old charm of 
manner, drawing a deep breath of relief. I moved 
away out of the reach of the scolding, entreatmg, 
passionate voice that implored him not to leave her 
even for an hour. 

Before he went away he called me again, and I went. 

I was not a woman, an identity even, I was only 
“ Nurse ” ; something in a cap and gown to serve 
real people, without a name, without a past or future, 
without temper, or heart, or taste, simply an autom- 
aton, before whom family skeletons walked at their 


ease. 


30 


VENUS VICTEIX. 


“ This will be my address,” he said, and wrote it 
down. “ Will you send me a telegram twice each 
day telling me how my wife is ? ” 

My wife ! The words cut mto me like a lash. 

“ The first one will be to say that I am dead ! ” 
cried Mrs. Norton, tears rolling heavily down her 
cheeks, “ and then perhaps you will be sorry ! ” 

He shook his head slightly, as if at the absurdity 
of her words, then as he tore the sheet out of his 
note-book, our eyes met. 

Ay, we had been lovers once, and our faces had 
been full of love and hope and faith, when last we 
had looked on one another, and now we were both 
changed and pale, as if love and we had never met 
and clasped hands, and I could only think of him 
now as a comrade in sore need of my help. 

“ I will do my best,” I said. 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


31 


CHAPTER HI. 

“ I’ve lost my hopes, I’ve lost my joy, 

I’ve lost the key, but not the lock ; 

I dm’st hae ridden the world around 
Had Christie Graeme been at my back.” 

So far, I had recalled the circumstances under 
which I first came to this house, in spite of an irri- 
tating knocking at the door that never ceased, but 
now as the summons grew more urgent, I became 
angry, and stamped my foot, feeling that I despised 
a man who so completely allowed love to master 
self-restraint. 

“ Lyndsay ! Lyndsay ! ” 

The cry, imperative, masterful, seemed to sweep 
through and fill the room, but it only angered me 
the more ; and I crossed over and with my lips close 
to the wood said, 

“ What do you want ? ” 

“ I have brought you food.” 

“ Then put it down and go away.” 

“But I must see you.” 

“ You can’t. If you attempt to enter this room to- 


32 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


night I shall go into hers. Y our conduct is unsee mly, 
contemptible.” 

“ But you must eat.” 

“ Put down the food, then, and go. Who gave you 
leave to unlock the door ? ” 

“ The house is mine. I am the master of it.” 

“ I suppose I shall not be arrested until after the 
coroner’s inquest ? ” 

“ No. And not then if I’m alive to prevent it. 
Will you open the door ? ” 

“ Yes. If you give me your word of honor not to 
try and come in.” 

“ But I must see you. We have to think of what 
is to be done.” 

“ There is nothing to be done. And you cut the 
ground from underneath my feet by your folly.” 

“ But I’ve got an idea. Lydia ” 

“ Keep it till to-morrow. If you don’t give me 
that promise, I won’t take in the food at all.” 

A pause, then : 

“ I promise,” came in a grudging voice, and I drew 
hack the holt. The door flew open and a bright 
light rushed in. Hardress was holding out a tray 
towards me. 

I trembled under its weight as I took it, and 


VENUS VICTEIX. 


33 


hastily turning about, set it on the floor, then I shut 
the door upon him. 

“ If you want me in the night, call ; I shall be out- 
side,” he said, as I drew the bolt, then the key 
turned on the other side. ’ 

I turned grimly to the considerations of those 
essentials of life that might surely be dispensed with 
in the case of a life that is practically forfeit to the 
law. Why should I eat ? To gather in more strength 
with which to suffer, to make stronger in me. the 
loss of mere existence ? And yet I broke bread and 
drank, and presently something that was not me, 
sang loudly in my heart, sang with a triumphant 
gladness that seemed to me brutal and inhuman, the 
paean which the living soul sings over our dead, 
even though our ears shudder as they hearken, and 
for shame’s sake would deny it. 

With that passion of joy in mere life throbbing in 
my veins I went back to my place by the window, 
and cried aloud that I would flght for it, for this my 
birthright, to the last ; that in spite of circumstan- 
tial evidence, in spite of motive, in spite of Hardress’s 
fatal imprudence, and of everything that could be 
urged against me, I would stand up and defend my- 
self to the very end. 


3 


34 


V£!NU8 VICTRIX, 


Through the best, the purest instincts of pity had 
I been betrayed, and even now I could not regret 
them, could not be sorry that I had worked as yoke- 
fellow with Hardress in the awful slavery from which 
for him there was no escape. If my love had ever 
been worth anything, then was the time to prove it 
— and I did. 

I took upon my shoulders the daily, hourly tor- 
ment that had been his ; I made myself so necessary 
to his tyrant that he became practically a free man, 
and gradually the color came back to his cheek, the 
light to his eye, and he was no longer a suffering 
machine, but a potential being, able to take his part 
in the world^s drama, ay, and enjoy it. 

After that first day in which he had looked at 
without recognizing me, he never seemed to look at 
me again. He went away, he returned ; but when 
he spoke to me, it was to an abstraction — to some- 
thing in a white cap, and apron — ^but to me as Lynd- 
say Gray — never. 

He must have known the hell his wife made those 
four walls for me, and sometimes, God forgive me ! 
I said to myself bitterly that a man’s selfishness 
was deeper than the sea, and higher than heaven it- 
self, inasmuch as he never once thanked me by look 
or word. 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


35 


But when it came — when I wakened one chilly 
morning to find my martyrdom over and my op- 
pressor dead — ^when the terrified household hurry- 
ing madly on each other’s heels at my summons, 
brought him also, it was not to the dead, but to me 
he turned as I stood apart, and stooping down to 
look in my eyes said : 

“ Lyndsay — poor little woman — Lyndsay I ” 


36 


V£:NUS victbix. 


CHAPTER IV. 

“Since in the toils of fate thou art enclosed 
Submit, if thou canst brook submission.” 

I PAUSE in a restrospection that is one of course, 
leaping hither and thither, without regard to the 
due sequence of events, and return to the moment 
when Hardress Norton had departed to his sick 
mother, leaving me in sole charge of his wife. 

He had dried the tears which had gushed so plen- 
tifully for him, dried them quietly, calmly, as if it 
were a part of his day’s work, and after he had 
gone, as they continued to roll down, I dried them 
again, with a grim sense of the irony of the whole 
situation. 

Presently she stopped crying, and looked at me 
when I finally ceased to apply the cambric to her 
cheeks. 

“ Powder-puff,” she said laconically. 

It was close beside her, as a good woman, anxious 
for her soul, might keep her Bible. 

“ Hand-glass,” she said in the same tone, when I 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


37 


had carefully distributed the scented powder over the 
delicate face in which the carnations still lingered, 
and which must have been so entrancingly lovely 
when she lived and moved like other mortals, and 
had her being. 

Are we not all slaves to the eye? But methinks 
it is color that gives us our greatest joy. I held 
the mirror so that she might see her head and the 
web of Mechlin lace that fell between it and the 
swathed outline on the bed. 

She looked at herself eagerly, questioningly, and 
I knew that the show was not all pure vanity, for 
that she wished to know how she had looked to 
Hardress as he went. 

“ Take it away,” she said presently ; then added, 
with a sort of grudging praise : 

“ You’re not such a fool as the last woman. She 
screamed at the sight of a powder-puff, and didn’t 
know a single trick by which a man’s slippery love 
is caught and kept. She preached submission. 
Submission ! Do I look like it ? She pointed out 
how much I had to be thankful for — what treasures 
still remained, ha ! ha ! How happy I ought to be 
to have a husband to sit beside me, and for me to 
turn up the whites of my eyes at. It’s about all I 


38 


VENUS VICTRIX, 


can do except talk and eat. How pleased I ought 
to feel that I’ve escaped the pomps and vanities of 
this wicked world, that I’ve been given time to re- 
pent, and can at least look forward to dying in my 
bed, instead of out of it — as will sometimes happen 
to even the salt of the earth.” 

She paused to laugh with a measureless scorn 
that was grand in its way, then stopped suddenly 
and said : 

“ Do you know how old I am? Hot quite twenty- 
five, and I am dead — dead but for a heart and brain 
that burn and burn and burn 

I asked some questions. 

“ They have tried everything,” she said savagely ; 
“ electricity, everything, and now they let me alone. 
Paralysis is the curse of our family — it strikes the 
child in his cradle, the mother by her husband’s 
side, and to begin with, we are all so intensely alive, 
alive to our finger-tips ! You must have noticed 
it,” she added abruptly, and with that sovereign air 
of addressing an inferior that seemed habitual to 
her. 

“ How paralysis loves to strike the fully alive — the 
slow and torpid are akin to him, his brothers and 
sisters once removed, and he passes them by with 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


39 


the contempt that one mostly feels for one’s re- 
lations. Ah, ha ! he says, you must he alive^ you 
must be tingling with life to know, to taste what 
death is .. . and he freezes the strong body, chokes 
the full currents of its blood, leaves the living heart 
in the dead body, and you have all the anguish of 
life with none of its sweets, and the chill forgotten- 
ness of the grave, without its rest. You are an in- 
cubus to what you love best on earth, a corroding 
curse to a self that loathes its other self ” 

She stopped abruptly and laughed — laughed dis- 
cordantly, and in the pauses that followed, the soft 
roll of carriages came to our ears from the street 
beyond, and that hum of life of which she so inti- 
mately knew the meaning. 

“ If only I had had warning,” she said presently. 
“Do you think if I had known it was coming on, I 
should be lying here ? I have my own ideas on such 
points, and I think that death should be death and 
life life — ^but death in life, and life in death is unnat- 
ural, abhorred of Nature and never intended by it. 
One note of warning, and I would have died whole 
and beautiful — my end would have been tragic, 
horrible, but my admirers would have remembered 
me so, and my husband ... he could never have 


40 


VENUS VICTRIX, 


(her voice sank to a whisper, but I caught the words) 
have forgotten me then. But now — I am only 
ludicrous — people laugh — and pity. To he pitied ! 
O God, Sabine Norton to be pitied! They say, 
‘She is dead all but for a wagging head and 
tongue,’ and I am already forgotten. What the 
eye don’t view, the heart don’t rue, and I never 
made anyone of my lovers friend enough to go on 
loving me when I was clean out of sight. You 
must care a little yourself to do that.” 

“ And you did not care ? I said idly. 

“No. I never loved hut one man, and him I mar- 
ried. I could never he bothered with any of the 
rest. And I loved clothes— not intrigue. There’s 
much more fun to be got out of clothes — and far 
less trouble than the other. Some women go 
through life carrying a latch-key that they slip into 
every door worth opening — and no one is the wiser ; 
others who are fools, carry a large, rusty door-key, 
and it is so large and makes so much noise that 
everybody sees and hears when she tries to use it, 
so they are howled out, and everybody cries ‘ O ! 
Fie! ’ Well, I never could be plagued with either 
the one or the other, and a woman doesn’t deserve 
to be born who doesn’t find out that the less she cares 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


41 


for the men, the more they care for her. So I al- 
ways had a succes fon with men, and some husbands 
might have minded, but mine — didn’t.” 

Jealousy is the core of love, I thought ; and my 
pity for her grew. 

“ Why do I talk to you like this ? ” she burst out 
suddenly. “ I don’t know ; I didn’t to the other 
ones. Only you are more used to death than life, 
and nothing can shock or astonish you. Would 
you mind ringing that bell ? ” 

I rang, and almost on the instant, a door opened 
and a middle- aged woman entered, carrying a tea- 
tray which she arranged on a table at a distance, 
then without a glance towards the bed or me, with- 
drew. 

“ Lydia,” said Mrs. Norton, when we were alone. 
“ A good creature, I believe, but I don’t know, for I 
never spoke to her and I have forbidden her to look 
at me ; and, strange to say, she never does. What- 
ever her faults may be, curiosity is not one of them, 
and I believe she respects my desire not to be made 
a peep-show of. Will you pour out the tea ? ” 

I did so, and brought hers. 

“ It is a pity I have such a good appetite,” she 
said, while I was feeding her, “ now if I could only 


42 


VENUS VICTEIX. 


make up my mind to starve myself I should die ; 
hut I can’t. It’s a poor thing to come to, to love 
nothing but your dinner, isn’t it ? It’s what 
coming to fast.” 

I left her and sat down at the distant table. 
Presently she called out to me : 

“You must have been pretty once.” 

I did not answer. The temptation was strong on 
me to say : 

“ I am Lyndsay Gray — the woman your husband 
loved, and would have married, had you not lied and 
forged to separate us. Do you wish me to stay and 
nurse you now f ” 

But I did not say it. She might have laughed in 
my face and asked what that signified? And he 
had forgotten my very face, and the humiliation of 
forcing myself on his recognition would be too 
keen. 

And the temptation to study her, to know her, to 
find out by what force of beauty, or charms or 
brains she had taken him from me, was strong upon 
me, side by side with that impulse of pure humanity 
which, thank God, was not dead in my breast. 

Presently Mrs. Norton pointed out to me my 
quarters, and I rose to look at them. Occupying 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


43 


one corner of the great room was a small camp-like 
bedstead, and on one side a costly table upon 
which were jug and ewer; on the other a bureau 
inlaid with mother-of-pearl and with deep wide 
drawers, in which a moderate wardrobe could easily 
be stored. 

The whole was enclosed by a screen not more 
than five feet high, and so beautiful that I longed to 
reverse it, so that I might have it to look at during 
the night. 

“Where are your things?” said Mrs. Norton 
abruptly. “ You may as well arrange them before 
dinner.” 

“ I started at almost a moment’s notice,” I said ; 
“but they promised to send them after me. May I 
see if anything is outside ? ” 

She nodded, and I opened the door. My box met 
my eyes as a welcome and familiar object on the 
landing, and I promptly dragged it in. 

“ You are very strong,” said an envious voice from 
the bed. 

I unlocked the trunk, and transferred its contents 
to the bureau drawers. From where she lay, al- 
though far distant, she could watch me, but she 
made no remark until I lifted out my desk, and then 


44 


VEA^l/S VITRIX. 


she called me so suddenly that I went to her with 
it in my hand, thinking her in sudden pain. 

“ ^VTiat an old-fashioned concern,” she said curi- 
ously. “ I didn’t know people ever used such things 
nowadays. What do you keep in it — ^your diary — 
or your love letters ? ” 

I felt my face change, felt as though she were 
reading my very soul, and knew that his letters 
were within half a yard of her. Then I moved 
away, resolving that at the first opportunity I would 
destroy those passionate tokens that were all that 
now remained to me of Hardress Norton’s love. 

“ So you have had your romance, too,” said she 
presently,, and there was satisfaction in the way she 
mentioned the past tense. “ Some day you shall 
tell me all about it — when I am tired of talking to 
you.” 

But she never grew tired of talking of herself. 
The whole world was merged in that, to her, vitally 
interesting personality, and I must confess that I 
too came to find it interesting, even if its study was 
a bitter and unprofitable task. 

For on that first day she appeared at her very 
best, and I never afterwards felt so strongly for her, 
or put myself in her place so completely as I did then. 


VENUS VICTRIX, 


45 


And I can say now, now that every shadow of 
self-deception is cleared away, that I did not think 
of him at all at that time, that I had neither fear 
nor desire of seeing him, he was so simply wiped 
out in the identity of this woman who must always 
have been stronger than he, or why did she and I 
stand in such a position to each other now? 

And when, at midnight, having attended to all 
her needs, and administered her sleeping draught, I 
at last lay down on my bed behind the screen, I was 
too worn out with fatigue even to think about the 
strangeness of it all, but fell straightway into the 
blessedness of sleep. 


46 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


CHAPTER V. 

“ Gowden glist the yellow links 
That round her neck she’d twine; 

Her een war o’ the skyie blue, 

Her lips did mock the wine.” 

I DULY telegraphed the two bulletins a day to 
Hardress Norton, and at the end of a week, his 
mother having rallied greatly, he returned. There 
are men, not habitually negligent or unobservant, 
who do not even see things and people outside their 
radius of action, commerce or conversation, and one 
servant is exactly like another, save, perhaps, in a 
difference of petticoats and pantaloons, while the 
face goes for nothing ; so that when on the follow- 
ing morning, Hardress Norton paid his wife a visit, 
he apparently glanced at my cap only, as I stood 
apart, and addressed such remarks as he did make 
to that article of my attire and that alone. 

Once more I saw her hungrily, thirstily, cover 
his brown face with kisses, once more her voice took 
on that sound like to the babbling brook : 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


47 


“ In the leafy month of June, 

That to the sleeping woods all night 
Singeth a quiet tune.” 

and once more I knew that for love’s sake and love’s 
alone, she had stolen him from me. 

She had told me frankly enough — ^with the frank- 
ness that was so insolent, why she had loved Har- 
dress Norton. 

“ All the women were in love with him ; he can 
make anyone he likes fall in love with him still, 
and I was as bad as the rest,” she said. “ It was 
roturiere^ vulgar, tasteless, to be one of a flock of 
sheep, hut I came under his spell, and succumbed. 
I don’t know what his charm is ; I’ve never been 
able to analyze it, but it’s there.” 

I drew a deep breath — yes, it was there. I too 
had fought against it — in vain. 

Was it his strength, or the self-control that was 
almost imperturbability that made him seem a tower 
of strength upon which all essentially feminine 
creatures loved to rest, to repose themselves ? 
Yet these would have gone for little without 
the hearty chivalrous and noble, that reformed his 
every look, word and deed, and that made him, for 
all his reserved strength, no match for an unprinci- 


48 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


pled woman, or chicanery of any kind. Dark, strong, 
swift, what did it matter that he had no beauty to 
commend him, nay, for that very reason did we 
not love him the more ? 

The mere fact of loving satisfies some women — 
did it satisfy Sabine Norton ? 

Perhaps she could not help her passionate, wayward 
temper — the temper that estranged everybody, and 
that had clearly estranged him. Somehow, I could 
not but think then of a toy that an angry child has 
beaten to pieces and that he loves for all his anger, 
cherishing the broken pieces and holding them to 
his breast, and once again I was sorry for her — 
almost for the last time. 

“ Hardress hates nurses,” she broke out, furiously 
and savagely, one day, “ so you can go out of the 
room when he comes, and he will sit with me in the 
afternoon when you are out walking.” 

I replied, coldly enough, that I did not think that 
he had noticed my existence at all, hut I would be 
careful in future not to give him a chance of dis- 
covering it. 

I was making her toilette of vanity at the time, 
scrupulously carried out each day, and she jerked 
from my hand the exquisitely round cleft chin 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


49 


that was one of her greatest beauties. It was mar- 
vellous how, without bloom, without happiness, 
without hope, she remained beautiful as a master- 
piece of Phidias himself. 

“ You have a frightful temper,” she said, “and no 
wonder, you eat little and you drink water. A 
woman who can’t enjoy good food and good wine is 
a fool, and there must be something wrong about 
her somewhere. What are you thinking about ? ” 
she added angrily, as I smiled. 

“ That you are a very ill-bred woman.” 

“ So I have been told before. Though, if birth 
goes for anything ” 

“ It very often doesn’t,” I replied. Then, when I 
had cleared away all the impedimenta of the toilette, 
I said, “ Shall I read to you now ? ” 

“ Yes. You’ll find a pile of society papers over 
there. Society ! The people who are in it seldom 
or never write about it, but it is amusing to hear 
what the outsiders say.” 

I read, and she kept up a running commentary 
on the various names mentioned, until I thought of 
Vivien, and how her tongue rages like a fire amongst 
her acquaintance, leaving no woman pure, and no 
man brave. 


4 


50 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


I laid down the papers at last and said, 

“ Do you number one good woman amongst your 
acquaintance ? ” 

“ Not one as good as myself,” she said, coolly. 

“I wonder what the others must be,” I said 
almost unconsciously. 

“ How can one of your class be a judge of mine ? ” 
she said insolently. 

“We see a good deal of you,” I said, as I drew 
some knitting from my pocket, “ behind the scenes. 
We glide in and out; to us are given the keys of all 
the skeleton cupboards, and we know more than even 
the doctors themselves. We assist at the realities 
and not the shams of life, and in time we become 
philosophers, or, as you would call it, clear-eyed, 
hardhearted.” 

“ There is no doubt about your being the latter,” 
she said, fiercely ; “ but I was just the same, myself, 
once. You must suffer hard before it hurts you to 
see other people suffer, and I never had an illness 
in my life till this stroke. What did I want with 
sympathy? I don’t want it now— but I must talk, 
talk, or the little that is left alive of me would die 
too — perhaps. Do you think that would be desir- 
able?” she added. 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


51 


I did not answer her. Through the open doors 
we could hear the throbbing summer life go by, 
and I could not but think of all that the sound meant 
to her, and of what she had been last season, and 
had meant to be this. 

“ They used to call me the Goddess of Health,” 
she said, as if reading my thoughts. “ I like the title 
better than Venus Victrix, for I was proud of my 
strength, and of always being perfectly fresh when 
other women were washed-out rags. I loathed the 
very thought of disease, of suffering, but now — O ! 
for one real thrill of pain — to be racked with it from 
head to foot till I shrieked aloud, anything rather 
than this eternal numbness. I could bear it better 
if I had one hand free with which to beat this— 
corpse.” 

She spoke the last word, looking down at the 
shrouded outline on the bed, with fiercest loathing, 
and once again I pitied her with the pity of one who 
grieves because he cannot pity more. 

“ I may live for years like this,” she went on after 
a pause, “ but of course you know that. When I 
realized what had happened to me — ^"for I went to bed 
perfectly well, and woke up to find myself in a coffin, 
with only my head free— I implored my husband to 


52 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


kill me ; I bribed every servant who came near me 
with offers of my jewels — anything — to pour a dose 
of poison down my throat ; but no one would do it ; 
and then they drenched me with opiates, but did 
they bring me sleep? ‘God giveth his beloved 
sleep,’ but mine was neither sleeping nor waking, 
but resembling that grief of which Coleridge speaks, 
‘ drowsy, dull and unimpassioned — a grief without 
a tear.’ Well,” she laughed shortly, “I don’t im- 
portune anybody for the means of death now, on 
the contrary I make most people wish themselves 
dead who approach me.” 

“ That is true,” I said gravely. 

She laughed. 

“You are not a bad little nut,” she said, “and 
really I think you must have been pretty once. I 
told Hardress so, but he said he hadn’t noticed. 
Draw the blinds closer. People will be going out 
of town soon. How sweet the mignonette smells ! 
Did you write to Piesse and Lubin for those things ? 
Alfred must be talked to, that consomme last night 
was not up to the mark. And the strawberries 
from Norton Court are not good— tell the people 
downstairs to send to Covent Garden.” 


VE^US VICTBIX. 


53 


CHAPTER VL 

“ 0 often have I dressed my queen 
And often made her bed ; 

But now I’ve gotten for my reward 
The gallows tree to tread.” 

She had commanded a dress rehearsal, or rather 
parade, and the bed, the chairs, the very floor were 
all cumbered with the rolls of cloth of gold, cloth of 
silver, brocade and lace that I drew from the ward- 
robe to lay before her. 

She had made me twine round her brows a green 
and gold wreath in which she looked like a Bac- 
chante, and when I told her so, she said, “ It is good 
to look a thing and not feel it,” scornfully, but for 
the moment, her face was that of a Bacchante, 
into which the color of flesh and youth and wine 
had come. Moving joyously round the helpless 
body, reminded me more than ever of the mummy at 
the Egyptian feast. 

But soon the color faded, the wreath was a 
mockery, I removed it, and went back to the gowns, 


54 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


everyone of which was a memory, and every mem- 
ory a triumph. 

“ I danced at a Court hall in that,” she said, as I 
held up a miracle of frosted loveliness to her gaze, 
and all the men went on like fools, and Hardress 
told me when we came home that he had got the 
most beautiful woman in the whole world for his 
wife.” 

“You seem always to have worn white,” I 
said. 

“Always. There is no such background for a 
woman’s skin, and after all a woman’s skin should 
be her chief beauty. Mine was,” she added, with a 
little, bitter, angry groan. 

I did not hurry over a business that so evidently 
pleased her, and being but a woman, I enjoyed look- 
ing at them too, each one being further embellished 
with a little historiette of what she had said, done, 
and looked in it, though the result was pretty much 
the same — that she had infuriated the women, be- 
witched the men, and had a high old time of it 
generally. 

I could well believe it. Besides, I had often heard 
of her triumphs. She had not been called the beauti- 
ful Mrs. Norton for nothing, and what had now devel- 


VENUS VICTBIX, 


55 


oped into a radically bad temper may have been 
then but a touch of waywardness, that some men call 
spirit, and admire amazingly. 

I was holding one of the rich stuffs against my 
black gown, and only her head showed above the 
billows of finery, when her glance went past me, 
and her eyes lit up, and I knew that her husband 
had come in at the door behind me. 

I turned sharply away to hide the color in my face, 
and with her robe trailing over my skirt, went away 
into my little screened apartment, and sat down on 
the side of my bed, trembling. It was rarely indeed 
that he and I came to such close quarters, as his 
visits were now always paid in the afternoon, while 
I was out ; and even if I returned to find him there, 
the width of the great room was always between us. 
Presently I became aware of the gold and silver 
stuff mingling with my black gown, and I folded it 
up, angry that my self-control had so suddenly 
failed me, and wondering into what I might be be- 
trayed next. Supposing that he should one day look 
me full in the face and recognize me, what could he 
think but that I had come here in masquerade to be 
near him? He might think — but I shrank from 
pursuing the idea further, only wishing with all my 


56 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


heart that I had not yielded to the impulse of pity 
that had bade me stay. 

Presently I heard the door close, and her voice 
calling me. ' 

“ Come put away all this finery,” she said, then as 
I lifted some of it from the bed, looking at me with 
angry, suspicious eyes, 

“ Why did you color up like that when my hus- 
band came in, and run away, so preoccupied, too, that 
you did not even notice that you were wearing my 
gown ? ” 

“ He startled me,” I said calmly, as I folded a 
train. 

She laughed acridly. 

“ Confess that you admire him too,” she said, “ be- 
cause he is big and strong, and dark and ugly — the 
very man to show a woman’s beauty off, and after all 
that’s what a woman likes best. I never could en- 
dure a handsome man myself ; he usurps the sole 
prerogative of our sex ; and men were not born to be 
admired, but to admire us.” 

I did not pursue the subject, but I saw that she 
was studying me at intervals throughout the day, 
thus revealing to me an entirely new phase of her 
character, viz. ; that she was morbidly, blindly jeal- 


VENUS VICTEIX. 


57 


ous, and that she did not believe it possible for any 
woman to so much as look at her husband without 
falling in love with him. 

I smiled drearily at the thought, for it seemed to 
me hundreds of years ago that I had loved this man, 
who had been to me the very embodiment of moral as 
of physical strength, and who had yet been weak 
enough to let a woman ruin his life. 

And from that day, whether alertly relating to me 
her conquests, or railing at me for my stupidity, or 
showing to me her jewels (of which indeed he ap- 
peared to have been far more lavish than his love), 
or displaying with equal profusion a varied assort- 
ment of vices, both large and small, I dated a change 
in her, and saw that at intervals she regarded me 
positively as a woman, and not the mere machine 
for which she had at first taken me. 

It never seemed to occur to her that I had been in 
her own station of life, that these exquisite sur- 
roundings in which my homely black dress and 
white cap made the only discordant note, must be 
natural to me as the air I breathe, or I should con- 
stantly have expressed or felt admiration and sur- 
prise. One must be born into taste and brought up 
in it from infancy to really possess it, and no teach- 


58 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


ing on earth will make the vulgar man or woman 
acquire that curious quality described as “ the mind's 
tact,” which is at once a delight and a scourge to 
the person who possesses it. The beautiful Mrs. 
Norton did not possess that, any more than other 
fine qualities likely to discommode her, and though 
she had a perfect genius for clothes, there her 
powers ended. But she had sense enough to place 
her house in the hands of artists, and when she told 
them to give her a white bedroom, she got it, and 
being a thorough Pagan in her sensuous enjoyment 
of life, it had given her nearly as much pleasure, 
perhaps, as it now gave me. 

More than all, the flowers — constantly changed be- 
fore a leaf or blossom might wither — were a per- 
petual joy to me, a fact that awakened Mrs. Nor- 
ton’s scornful surprise, for she cared nothing about 
such simple pleasures, or for animals or children. 

To quote a small trait, but a cruel one — the day 
after I became her nurse I found in a corner of the 
room, huddled up at the bottom of his gorgeous 
cage, a bull-finch, starved to death. His crock was 
empty, there was not a grain of seed near him, and 
in the midst of plenty he had died. 

I asked her how this had befallen, and she said ; 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


59 


“ Oh, my maid used to look after him, and I sup- 
pose Lydia forgot him. Servants never remember 
things of that sort.” 

“ The more reason why their mistress should,” I 
thought, and my heart ached as I put the poor little 
body, starved in his gay prison house, outside the 
door. 

She laughed at me as I came back — ^this Pagan, to 
whom life meant one long, sensuous gratification, 
and to whom life was death now she could no longer 
enjoy it. 

“ How little you must have had to care for in your 
life,” she said one day, contemptuously, when I was 
arranging some roses, “to enjoy mere vegetables 
like that. There are so many things worth living 
for — so many ! ” She moved her head to and fro 
on the pillow after her usual restless fashion. “ But 
what should you know of such things? You are 
not a society woman. You have never tasted the 
wine of life.” 

“ No — thank God,” I said. 

“ You are not cut out for it,” she said calmly. “ A 
real woman of society is born, not made. And the 
wrinkles in your forehead show that you have a 
heart. By the way, how old are you? ” 


60 


VENUS VKJTRIX. 


“ Twenty-four.” 

“You might be thirty-four. So you would never 
succeed — no woman with a heart does. You can 
only govern men by caring absolutely nothing about 
them, by feeding it — still with beauty, no illusions, 
a first-rate house and chef and a sharp tongue you 
ought to be able to hold your own — and live.” 

“ Yet you married for love,” I said, half under my 
breath. 

She laughed. 

“I was engaged to another man when I met 
Hardress Norton,” she said, “ quite as rich, much 
better- looking — but I fancied Hardress.” 

A smile came over her mouth, and a light into her 
eyes ; it was easy to see how she could bewitch or 
be-devil a man to anything she pleased, and what 
chance had any ordinary woman against her ? 

“ My brother Esine and Hardress had been very 
pally,” she went on, “ when they got thrown to- 
gether in Egypt, and they came home together — to 
my mother’s house. She is dead now. Do you 
wonder that you never see any of my people here ? 
I hate relations and catch me letting them in here 
to preach at me when I’m not able to get up and 
turn them out! Well, Hardress knocked up with 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


61 


fever the very day after he got back, and I nursed 
him.” 

She laughed again, with a swelling note of tri- 
umph in her voice that turned me sick — for well 
I remembered how dear that triumph cost me. 

“ He was engaged to a little fool in Devonshire,” 
she went on, “ and called on her when he was deliri- 
ous, and wrote to her when he was sane. I watched 
his face while he waited for the replies. None came. 
Never in all my life did I care for anything I could 
have — it must be something out of my reach, and 
this man who scarcely looked at me seemed to be 
that.” 

She paused and I waited for more, my heart beat- 
ing so loudly I feared she would hear it. “All 
things come to him who waits,” she said, “and 
Hardress came to me. The girl jilted him.” 

I lifted my head and looked full in her blue eyes, 
and for a moment she blenched visibly. 

“Jilted him and married somebody else,” she 
went on hardily the next moment. 

“ Who brought the news ? ” I said hoarsely. 

“ My brother. He had stayed in Devonshire with 
Hardress and knew the girl— a pretty little dolhsh 
fool.” 


62 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


“ How did Mr. Norton take the news ? ” I said, 
forced to put down my knitting lest the trembling 
of my hands betrayed me. 

“ Had a fresh access of fever. Nearly died. I 
nursed him past the turning to death’s door. When 
he recovered we were married.” 

In the scarcely perceptible pause between the two ' 
last sentences, I saw vividly a gulf that she had 
bridged by tears, entreaties, seductions, sheer loss 
of womanly pride — and what other and guiltier 
aids ? 

“ Why do you look at me like that ? ” she said, 
furiously, and her fury seemed always the more 
terrible for its helplessness, because she had neither 
hands to strike, nor any power with which to en- 
force her authority. “ She was false to him, and he 
found a woman who could be true.” 

~ “ But was she false ? ” I said, the question, as it 
were leaping out of me, without my own volition. 

Mrs. Norton looked at me with that imperial air 
which became her so much better than that of mere 
vulgar anger, and said curiously, 

“ What do you know about it ? ” 

I shook my head and bent closer to my knit- 
ting, for the worst tellers of secrets are our eyes, 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


63 


and their mode of conveyance is swifter than light- 
ning, and what they speak is the living truth. 

“ I think she must have been just such a little 
brown mouse as you,” she went on meditatively, 
then added with a fine indifference to my feelings, 
“ and I hate brown mice. They nibble their way 
into a man’s heart and — stop there. And a woman 
can do anything — anything, except fill a heart that 
is already full to the brim.” 

I ventured to look at her. Scorn, hatred, jealousy 
had sounded in her voice, and spoke on every feature 
of her face, betraying that however she might boast 
of her husband’s love, she knew that she had never 
really possessed it, and hated fiercely the woman 
who had. 

Suddenly her mood changed, and she laughed. 
“ Men are selfish brutes,” she said, “ but after all, 
I like them better than women. They don’t see 
through you as a woman does, they make excuses — 
a woman doesn’t. And they have more real tender- 
ness than women. We call sentiment, gush ; fond- 
ness, liking ; being kind to people, tenderness ; but 
it’s the mock article, not the real, and there’s no 
strength in it, like a man’s.” 

As regarded her husband I knew that she spoke 


64 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


truth. He was a man who could not he unkind to 
a woman, even if he did not like her, and it is such 
men as these who are always secured by such 
women as she. 

But from that day onward, it seemed to me (per- 
haps because she was angry at having made any 
confidences to me) that she became more hard and 
exacting, more bitter in tongue and temper, and I 
also thought that she watched me with a covert 
scrutiny that prepared me for questions that I had 
quite resolved to answer — with the truth. 

And all this while his letters and a certain little 
bottle that I kept to remind and shame me of a 
moment in my life when I had been in very truth 
mad, lay in my writing-desk, the key of which 
always hung about my neck. 

I could easily have taken them out with me, dur- 
ing my daily walk in Kensington Gardens, have 
torn up and scattered the letters, and thrown the 
bottle into the pond, but some fatality held me back, 
and after all the poison was destined to do its work, 
and to still a heart upon which the likeness of Har- 
dress Norton was indelibly stamped. 

Dr. Du Pre came frequently, sat beside her, paid 
her compliments, and always went away fairly be- 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


65 


witched and with the shortest of memories as to 
her many shortcomings. 

Once outside the door indeed, her influence ended, 
and he was able to feel and display a little pity for 
me. 

One day I followed him out, and asked if her in- 
creasing irritability were a good or a bad sign. 

“ Neither,” he said ; “ but the hopelessness of her 
state will weigh on her more and more, and nat- 
urally her temper will get worse, hut her general 
health will probably remain good. She may live 
for years, and if she did not come of a highly neu- 
rotic family, in which early paralysis appears to he 
not the exception, but the rule, with her constitution 
she might have been a centenarian. She’ll wear 
out a good many nurses before she wears herself 
out,” he added, with a look that was much kinder 
than the words, and then he patted me on the 
shoulder, said I was a brave, good girl, and went 
away. 

“ Have you been fixing the date of my funeral ? ” 
said Mrs. Norton, when I returned. 

“ No, of mine,” I said shortly, and to some effect, 
too, for the virulence of her tongue abated during 
the following days, though T observed that her hus- 


66 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


band’s visits became shorter and shorter, so that I 
constantly found her alone on my return from a 
walk: so silent that I wondered what plot was 
hatching, or what mischief she would be up to 
next. 

Lydia still appeared, and 'disappeared, doing her 
work like an automaton, and so thoroughly, that I 
seldom had occasion to address a word to her, and 
never got any “ forrarder ” in my view of her per- 
sonality and character than I had done on the first 
day I saw her. She never addressed or looked at 
her mistress, and her mistress never addressed her. 
No relatives came to the house, or if they did, were 
denied admission, so that save through me, her hus- 
band and Dr. Du Pre, Mrs. Norton’s communication 
with the outside world was now absolutely severed. 

“Do you think I want a pack of women here 
to gloat over me, and rejoice that I can never ex- 
tinguish them any more, or take every male 
they have from them?” she said fiercely to me 
one day. “ God knows I never wanted their men, 
except to make a crowd about me wherever I went 
—yet I know that they are sorry for me — that they 
thmk kindly of me. I would not mind some of them 
seeing me now, I should love to hear their pleasant 


VENUS vicmix. 


67 


voices, to see their fresh looks — for it’s a great mis- 
take to think a beautiful, perfectly groomed woman 
is the smartest thing in creation : she isn’t. The well- 
born, well-set up, well-groomed mare is infinitely 
smarter. But Hardress would not like it — and cui 
hono ? I should only get a whiff, a maddening taste 
of the life from which I am shut out, and the ex- 
istence of an unburied corpse would be worse than 
ever.” 

I might fill volumes with her talk, the talk of a 
Pagan who believed that we are born into the world 
for nothing but enjoyment ; that if we have it, life 
is heaven ; if we have not, it is hell ; and against the 
fate that had cast her into this earthly purgatory, 
she raved and blasphemed with all the energy of a 
fiery, passionate nature that had never known dis- 
cipline in any shape or form. 

Once again I pause in my lonely retrospection. 
My eyes ache for weariness and memory refuses to 
give me back each monotonous hour that yet bore 
its indications of the final catastrophe — indications 
to which I was blind as a mole, and to which he 
was blind also. Even now I do not know at what 
precise moment jealousy of me arose, then sus- 
picion, lastly certainty of my identity, or by what 


68 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


means she carried out the fiendish plot by which 
I should be accused of her murder and probably 
hanged for it. 

But if much is blurred and indistinct, that last 
night stands out clearly enough in which I com- 
mitted a strange act of folly, for when at last I left 
my tormentor apparently asleep, and drew the 
screen to behind me, I kneeled down, and for the 
first time since I had entered the house, unlocked 
my writing-case, and looked at its contents, A 
slight sound in the room startled me, and I dropped 
both desk and letters, almost expecting to see a 
paralyzed arm reach over the screen and snatch 
them from me. 

Huddling the papers back, I must have over- 
looked the little bottle of poison (which indeed had 
no label and looked innocent enough) and locking 
the desk, I crept into bed. 

Now casting back my thoughts, recalling every 
conscious moment of that night, remembering vividly 
everything up to the moment I went to sleep, and 
more vividly still that to which I awakened, I am 
yet conscious that somewhere, thrust out of sight 
indeed, concealed in some locked recess of my 
memory, was something — something that eluded 


VENUS VICTEIX. 


69 


and defied me, possibly only a dream that aped 
reality, but it was there — and I could not find it. 

Cold and dread rose the thought within me, what 
if I had risen and in my sleep administered to her 
the potion that I had once, in the impious mad- 
ness of my sorrow, bought for myself. In my sleep 
— ay, but such things have been done, such things 
will still be done, so long as soul and body war 
against each other, each living being has two selves, 
though oftentimes man lives and dies without 
knowing it or having to acknowledge the deeds 
and often sinful deeds of that double self. What 
had I done while I slept — while she slept also ? I 
seemed to see one figure bending over another, a 
short, sharp struggle in a face only, a sudden 
silence, and then the penetrating odor of almonds 
spreading through the air and then be- 

tween that and the morning — nothing. 

I say that is what I fancied I might recall, if 
memory would allow me — yet hard as I strove, I 
could not recall any such thing — the door was locked 
against me. 

I had never to my knowledge walked in my sleep, 
as never in my waking moments had I felt any 
desire to shorten this woman’s miserable life, 


70 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


though (and may God forgive me for my sin) I had 
once thought of taking my own. 

But struggle as I would, still this thing was hid- 
den from me, and I could not see it. 

Whose voice is that sounding in my ears, and is 
it I, my very self, who am standing beside the dead 
woman, my hand on her cold breast, asking her over 
and over again, 

“ How did I do it ? Why did you let me do it? 
How did I do it — why did you let me do it ? ” . 

All is pitch darkness around me, and with an 
awful sound of fear I realize that I have been walking 
in my sleep, that my tongue has been automatically 
bearing witness to something that I did in some for- 
mer state of unconsciousness, and there is borne in 
upon me in a blinding flash of light that in very 
truth I am guilty of Sabine Norton’s death, for that 
whether under the impression that I was adminis- 
tering to her a sleeping draught or otherwise, I gave 
her the poison in my sleep. 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


71 


CHAPTER VI. 

“ And wae be to the Queen hersel 
She mlcht hae pardoned me ; 

But sair she’s strivin’ for me to hang 
Upon the gallows tree.” 

In the gray of the winter’s morning I threw open 
the door and almost fell over Hardress, who was sit- 
ting in a chair drawn right across the threshold. 

“Let me by,” I said, groping as one suddenly 
grown blind, and would have thrust past him, but 
he fairly lifted me in his arms and put me back in 
the room, while I struggled in vain to free myself, 
to escape anywhere — anywhere from that handiwork 
of mine that lay in the next room. 

“ My poor little soul,” he said, holding me, “ they 
won’t let you out — someone is watching in the hall. 
And if you tried to run away, it would be construed 
into a confession of guilt. What a wan little face, 
and the fire is out ” 

“ Hardress,” I said, looking up piteously as a child 
into his face in the hard, chilly light, “ it’s true ; I 
did kill her. I brought the poison into this house. 


72 


VENUS VIGTRIX, 


I gave it her. She is dead. I had some mad idea 
of escaping ” 

“ Yes,” he said, as he drew me through the door 
and closed it behind him, “ it was a mad idea indeed, 
and you must be very mad to suppose that I shall 
believe such a wild story as you are telling me. 
You no more killed her than I did.” 

“ I did not know it till last night,” I said in a 
whisper. “ I found myself walking in my sleep, and 
talking to her. There was always something that 
happened on the night she died that I could not re- 
member — ^but I know now. She refused to have her 
sleeping draught that night, and said she would call 
out to me if she wanted it. That was the last 
thought I had when I went to sleep — that she might 
call me. God alone knows by what horrible acci- 
dent I gave her the poison instead of the draught 
— ^but I did it.” 

Hardress put me into an easy-chair, removed my 
bonnet, drew my cloak closer round me, locked the 
door, and put the key in his pocket, then walked 
over to the fuel-basket and proceeded to lay in and 
light a fire, after a man’s bungling but persevering 
fashion. 

When it was fairly alight, he rang the bell, un- 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


73 


locked the door, and ordered tea of someone who 
came, presently brought it to my side, and poured 
it out, all in such masterful fashion that I fell into 
my old habit of obedience, and drank it. 

“Now, Lyndsay,” he said presently, “you are 
better and able to talk sense. The long night alone 
in this room has turned your brain — and no wonder. 
The only astonishing thing is that the last months 
have not made an idiot of you — and if you were not 
the bravest and pluckiest little girl in the world, 
they would have done so.” 

“ Hardress ” I began. 

“ Put your feet to the fire, child, so. You have 
me to take care of you now, and I mean to do it 
thoroughly. Do you think I am going to let you slip 
through my fingers again ? ” 

“ Hush ! ” I cried shuddering. “ She will hear 
you! And it is you who are mad, not T. Yester- 
day I believed that she had deliberately died to keep 
us forever apart, to-day I know that I wronged her 
— and indeed how could she possibly have carried 
out such a thing ? And she would be alive at this 
moment but for me. Ask your common sense. Who 
could have killed her but me? We were locked in 
alone — ^two women, and one died.” 


74 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


Hardress shook his head imperturbably, and I 
felt that he was a tower of strength against which, 
alas ! I dared not lean. 

“ Someone was concealed in the room,” he said, 
“someone who got out in the confusion next morn- 
ing, and who had been bribed by her to give the 
poison, knowing that suspicion would fall upon you.” 

I shook my head. 

“ W as she a woman to give up her life willingly, 
even to be revenged on anybody ? Such as it was 
she loved it, and I never saw the smallest sign that 
she had discovered my identity. I was blind and 
mad to let myself be persuaded into staying when I 
knew who she was,” I added bitterly ; “ it was an- 
utterly false position from the first.” 

“A mistake, certainly,” said Hardress, “but a 
generous one in which you took thought for others 
— none for yourself. You pitied her — you pitied 
me, ergo after your old self-sacrificing fashion, 
you never thought of the risks you ran, or that be- 
cause I had not recognized you at first sight, I 
should not recognize you afterwards, but you were 
mistaken. Something familiar in your air and figure 
struck me the seecond time I saw you, but you 
kept your face obstinately averted, and I could not 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


75 


be sure. Then I watched you go out and in, but 
your veil was thick and your hair is darker, child, 
than it used to be, and once you walked like a 
fairy ” 

“ That was a long while ago,” I said drearily. 

“But when you were showing off her gauds to 
that poor woman I saw your face distinctly, and 
knew. I was so astounded that I am sure she 
guessed something, and never ceased to watch the 
pair of us till the end. I think she was always 
worse to you when I was anywhere about than at 
other times. Sometimes she used to treat you like 
a dog. My blood boiled with rage, and she saw it. 
Often I longed to say to you ‘ Go away before your 
health and spirit are entirely broken, for she is not 
worth it, and she may do you a mischief yet,’ but I 
did not. Brute that I am, the mere chance sound 
of your voice, and fugitive glimpse of you now and 
then made me insanely happy, though I wondered 
then, as I wonder now, where is your husband, 
Lyndsay, and how do you come to be out alone in 
the world earning your own bread ? ” 

I bowed my head on my hands and wept — wept 
unwonted tears for pity and gratitude at this love 
of his for so poor a thing that lived through deser- 


76 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


tion, betrayal, and years of absence, and was as 
tender, strong and unselfish as ever. 

“ You have not been happy,” he said, in the rough 
voice of a man in pain, “ and I don’t even know the 
name of the fellow — ^you spoke only of yourself in 
the letter that you wrote to tell me that you were 
going to be married.” 

“ What ! ” I cried, lifting my pale, blurred face. 
“I wrote to tell you that I was going to be mar- 
ried 

“ I’ve got it here ! ” he said, looking at me with 
astonishment, and he took out a pocket-book from 
which he produced a shabby bit of paper that had 
been so often folded and unfolded, handled and re- 
placed, that it fell almost in pieces as he spread it 
out on the palm of his big brown hand for me to 
read. 

Oh yes ! it was my writing, apparently, and it 
had my trick of wording, and in just such fashion 
might I have announced my treachery — had I com- 
mitted it. 

“ Hardress (it said) you have been away too long, 
and I could not remember you always, and by the 
time this reaches you I shall be married. I was 
never worthy of you, and in time you will forget 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


77 


m3, and find some other woman to love you more 
faithfully and truly than did ever Lyndsay.” 

I read it steadily through, this scrap of paper 
that had signed the death-warrant of my happiness 
and his, and thought of the sickening days and 
nights in which I had watched and waited, first for 
his letters, then for him, and how in the newspaper 
one day, without the smallest warning, I had read 
the announcement of his marriage with a woman of 
whom I had never even heard. 

“ You were staying with the Nortons when you 
received that letter ? ” I said. 

“Yes. I came straight through from South 
Africa with Norton. I was to stay there one night 
on my way to you, but I hadn’t been in the house 
twelve hours when I was down with a return of a 
fever and went off my head for some days. The 
first thing I asked for, when I came to myself, was 
your letters, hut there were none — and though I 
wrote repeatedly asking the reason of your silence 
I got no reply, until one day arrived — .this. Later 
on Esine came and told me that you were married. 
I think I went mad in those first days,” went 'on 
Hardress, “indeed I must have done — to allow 
Sabine Norton to get the influence over me that she 


78 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


did. She was a beautiful creature, but she might 
have been as ugly as sin for all I knew and cared. 
Well” — ^he colored and paused, “there are things a 
man can’t talk about, and I believe after her selfish 
fashion she did love me, and whether married or 
single or dead, it was all one to me now I had lost 
you — and we were married. You know what she 
was,” he added wearily, “ and how utterly incom- 
patible in temper, tastes, pursuits, everything, we 
were, but the world counted me a most fortunate 
man to own such a miracle of loveliness, and I 
became an object of envy where I was really one of 
pity. In the very zenith of her success came the 
stroke of paralysis — and you know the rest. No, 
one has been able to live under the lash of her tongue 
but you — and you did it for my sake — and may 
God bless you for it, child.” 

“ Hardress,” I said, “ I did not write that letter. 
It is a forgery. I was never married. But I killed 
her — I killed your wife, and we are cursed by Fate 
a second time — and we might have been so 
happy ! ” 

I covered my face, but at a low, hoarse cry of joy, 
of yearning, close at hand, I started up, falling back 
as he would have seized me, back and back, till I 


VENUS VICTBIX. 79 

had put a table between us, across wliich he stretched 
out greedy arms. 

“ Lyndsay, little woman,” he cried, “ so you never 
have belonged, you never shall belong to any man 
but me.” 

“ Is this a time to talk of love ? ” I said harshly, 
unkindly ; “ and whatever she did, she has paid all 
debts, for she is dead.” 

Hardress’s arms fell to his sides, and the glow 
faded from his face. He looked a weary and 
thwarted man, as he stood with that barrier between 
us, and my heart ached at the thought of all he had 
suffered for me, and all he would have to suffer— 
yet. 

“You must go away now,” I said. “The whole 
household is talking about us as it is. They will 
say that we plotted the crime together ” 

“The plotting was hers,” cried Hardress, with 
intense bitterness. “ God knows I never suspected 
her of brain or cunning enough to carry out such a 
hideous scheme, but now that I know with what 
skill she separated us, I see that she was clever 
enough for anything. I am sure she knew for a 
long time who you were, and instead of being 
grateful to you, like a good woman, or turning you 


80 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


out like a mere, jealous, hot-headed one, she deliber- 
ately set a trap for us both, and when she found 
that of no use, elected to die in such a way as to 
cast suspicion on you, and so effectually separate 
us a second time.” 

I shook my head, 

“ So I thought until last night,” I said, “ but 
now I know. The coroner will be here in another 
couple of hours.” 

“ And you are going to stand up and confess to 
such a mad lie as that^ ” he cried vehemently. 

“ It will save trouble,” I said, with the apathy of 
despair. And the deadliest form of despair is when 
it attempts no violence to self or others, for violence 
proves life, and true apathy is mental death. 

“You have dreamed a dream, my poor little 
child,” he said, with the passionate tenderness of a 
strong man deeply moved, “and no wonder — and 
you think it truth. But you have someone else to 
consider in the world beside yourself now.” 

“ Hardress,” I said, in utter despair, “ can’t you 
see that we shall never be anything to each other 
now ? She kept us apart living, she stands between 
us dead — she was always Venus Victrix,” I added 
drearily. 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


81 


“ You must have some sleep,” he said, bending 
down to look in my eyes, “ or your brain will go. 
Shut your eyes, and you will keep them shut from 
mere exhaustion. When you are wanted I will 
come for you.” 

He pulled down the blinds, drew my cloak closer 
around me, put a stool for my feet, then with a 
brief, swift touch on my hair, left me. 

6 


82 


VENUS VICTBIX 


CHAPTER YII. 

“ What’s greener than the greenest grass ? 

What’s higher than the trees ? 

WTiat’s waur nor an ill woman’s wish ? 

What’s deeper than the seas ? ” 

It had surprised me a little that Lydia did not 
approach me, hut I reflected that I had given her 
no opportunity of doing so, that indeed her presence 
had not been required in the death-room, for first 
the hired women and then the doctors had done all 
that was necessary, and since then I had locked her 
out with the rest. 

But presently, some time after Hardress had left, 
a slight sound made me look up to see her standing 
beside me, neat, apathetic and pale as usual. 

Suddenly there flashed across my mind the very 
different presentment I had seen of her last — a 
wild, terrified, shrieking woman, who, rushing in 
with the rest, would not even look at the sight to 
which her fellow-servants called her, but turned 
and ran headlong from the place as if pursued by 
the furies. 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


83 


“ Shall I bring you some breakfast, miss ? ” she 
said in precisely her usual tone, and her dull eyes 
met mine without a ray of expression or speculation 
in them. 

“ I have had some,” I said, feeling comforted by 
her mere presence and homely question, so com- 
plete is that isolation of crime in which I knew 
myself to stand. 

“ You have not been to bed, miss,” she said, and 
the accent was kind, and I thought that, knowing 
what she knew, and what all the house knew, she 
was acting in a very womanly fashion. 

“ Lydia,” I said abruptly, “ they say I killed your 
mistress — and they say the truth.” 

Her eyes dilated and contracted as she gazed at 
me. She seemed to be holding her breath hard. 

“ I did not know it at first,” I said, “ but I do 
now. I did not mean to kill her, but I did.” 

Lydia’s face relaxed and she shook her head. 

“I don’t believe a word of it, miss,” she said. 
“Did you — did you leave the door unlocked that 
night ? ” 

“ And if I had,” I said, “ who would be likely to 
do her a mischief? And who but myself could 
find the poison I had locked away ? ” 


84 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


A tremor crossed her face. 

“ It was a pity you kept such a thing about you, 
miss,” she said quite respectfully, “ with the best of 
care it might lead to” — she paused — “accidents. 
Did master know you had got it ? ” she added, in 
a quiet, even tone that seemed to reduce the ex- 
traordinary question to one of baldest common- 
place. 

“ And if he did know,” I cried hotly, “ and it was 
utterly impossible he should know, how could he 
have got into a locked room, and what object could 
he have in killing her ? ” 

Lydia stood silent, her eyes on the ground, the 
type of a well-appointed servant in a gentleman’s 
family — nothing noteworthy about her anywhere, 
yet somehow this quiet, dull woman, whom I had 
looked on as an automaton, seemed mistress of the 
situation, and I waited anxiously for what she 
should say next. 

It came at last, taking my breath away. 

“ Master loved you^ miss,” she said. 

“You talk like a madwoman,” I said fiercely. 
“You never saw us together in your life.” 

“ But I have seen him watch for you, miss,” she 
said, calmly, “ so have the other servants — and it 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


85 


was a pity his face lit up so — it said such a lot.” 

Each word this woman said, herself until now 
such a complete nonentity, confounded me more. 

“ So you were all spies,” I said sharply, “ and 
little enough you saw for your pains. Perhaps you 
were good enough to take your gleanings to your 
mistress ? ” I added, with a sudden lightning convic- 
tion that this woman had all along been something 
very different to what I supposed. 

“ No, miss,” she said quietly, “ you know Mrs. 
Norton never allowed me to approach her. But 
perhaps she saw that master ” 

She paused, as I caught her arm and shook it. 

“You have been spying on me,” I cried fiercely — 
“ probably reading my letters.” 

“ How you do frighten a body, miss ! ” she said, 
“ and you so quiet always. What letters were you 
talking about ? ” 

“ The letters I kept in my desk,” I said, trying to 
see through eyes that were lifeless as those of a fish ; 
then I pushed her from me and ran into the next 
room. 

I think I had forgotten for the moment that cold, 
white thing on the table, but I ran past it and so to 
my little screened-in chamber, where I kneeled down 


86 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


beside the cabinet and dragged out my desk. It 
was empty — and the lock was broken. 

Lydia had followed me in and now stood beside 
me. “ What have you lost, miss ? ” she said, and 
there was a note in her voice — was it of defiance or 
of hardihood ? that most disagreeably impressed me. 

“You ought to know,” I said, as I rose to my feet, 
“ no one had access to this room but you ” 

“ And master,” said the woman. 

“ How could your master have touched anything 
of mine when your mistress was always present ? ” 
I cried ; “ and a gentleman does not meddle with a 
woman’s desk.” 

“He was often here alone when mistress was 
asleep,” said Lydia in unruffled tones. “ She some- 
times slept of an afternoon, and more than once he 
rung for me to fetch him books and papers to read 
till she woke up.” 

I did not reply. I was studying her face intently, 
studied it until at last her eyes flickered. 

“ What had you to do with last night’s work ? ” I 
said, quietly. “ I know my own part in it — ^what 
was yours ? ” 

The woman shook her head. It struck me sud- 
denly that she was neater even than usual, and had 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


87 


•waken considerable pains with her appearance that 
morning. Why ? And there were lines in her face 
that had not been visible yesterday. 

“ I brought up the things for the night, miss,” she 
said, “ and then went to bed. In the morning very 
early, your bell woke me, and I rushed down with 
the rest.” 

“ But you could not have got in first,” I said, 
thinking hard ; “ the others must have told you what 
had happened, for you shrieked, and would not go 
near the bed.” 

“ ’Twas all such a fiurry, I don’t mind much about 
it,” said Lydia, calmly, “ you were fiurried enough 
yourself. I’ll be bound.” 

“ What was there to be afraid of ? ” I said. “ She 
was dead — she could not hurt you.” 

“ Not a bit, miss,” said Lydia, in her usual au- 
tomaton-like tone. “It’s cold here, won’t you go 
back into the other room ? ” 

Mechanically I went. I noticed that she made a 
circuit, not to go past her late mistress, but once in 
the other room, she began to straighten the furni- 
ture, and mend the fire. 

Presently she came back and stood^ before me, her 
hands folded on her white apron, and a strange look 
of authority on her plain features. 


88 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


“ Don’t you take it on yourself, miss,” she said. 
“ Let them find out what they can find out for them- 
selves. They’ve got to prove it, and they can’t. 
Can’t you say, miss,” and she dropped her voice to 
a whisper, “ that you forgot to lock the door that 
night, and then it might be anybody, master or 
me ” 

The curious persistency of her attack on Hardress 
puzzled me. She had no reason to like me any bet- 
ter than she did him, yet she had as evidently made 
up her mind to my innocence, as she had to suspect 
his, and actually went the length of accusing him 
in order to shield me. 

“ And supposing I lied about the door,” I said, 
“ the poison was my poison, and I gave it to her in 
mistake for a sleeping draught when I was half 
asleep, or quite asleep, I don’t know which.” 

Lydia shook her head. 

“ No, miss, you didn’t,” she said, with an energy 
that astonished me ; “ you ain’t given to such foolish 
ways, and though that poor thing led you a dog’s 
life, you never had a thought of harm to her. But 
there’s others may have done — ’twas enough to 
drive a poor gentleman mad to see the difference be- 
tween you and §he — ^nd h^r temper ’ud wear any 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


89 


man’s love down inch by inch to the very ground. 
After all, ’twas but hurrying her a hit, and she’d 
have killed you if it had gone on much longer.” 

“ Go,” I cried, fiercely, “ leave me — go I ” and she 
went, leaving me to press my hands over my burn- 
ing eyes, seeking to shut out the vision that rose 
unbidden before me of a man stealing in the dead of 
night to a helpless woman’s side. . . . O ! my God, 
had indeed he done it, and was that why he was so 
sure of my guiltlessness ? 

There were only us two — ^us two who ardently 
desired (dared we to speak as Nature dictated) her 
death, and one of us it must have been who killed 
her — but which ? 


90 


VJENUS VICTBIX, 


CHAPTER VIII. 

Venus Victeix was holding her last levee, in her 
own white and beautiful chamber, and every man 
who looked upon her face was in her thrall. 

I was Anathema maranatha to them — ^these men 
who saw only a lovely, helpless woman done to her 
death by the miserable creature who had crept into 
her house under the guise of a nurse, hating and 
loathing her for being the mistress of it — and 
with every wish and desire to steal her husband 
from her. 

For when the purely formal proceedings were over, 
and before my cross-examination had begun. Dr. Du 
Pre produced from his breast pocket a packet of 
letters, and with a gravity that bespoke their impor- 
tance handed them over to the coroner. 

“ I found this bundle of letters by Mrs. Norton’s 
side,’ he said, “ and their contents speak for them- 
selves. They furnish the motive for what at first 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


91 


sight appeared as stupid and senseless, as brutal a 
crime as was ever committed. With their evidence, 
and that of the empty bottle of poison which Miss 
Gray admits to have been hers, there is a sufficiently 
strong case against her.” 

I looked calmly at him as he spoke. Had he for- 
gotten the life this woman led me — this woman who 
by the piteous manner of her death had been washed 
clean of all earthly stain ? 

There was a little silence, while the coroner un- 
folded one of the letters, and ran it through. 

I looked at Hardress — he was calm, and with arms 
folded on his breast, returned my glance with a nod, 
full of encouragement and strength. 

“ These letters,” said the coroner, addressing him, 
“were written by you to Miss Gray some years 
ago ? ” 

“ They were.” 

“ When you expected to marry her ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ Your wife was aware of the position in which 
you had formerly stood to Miss Gray ? ” 

“ I have reason to believe that she did know.” 

“ She spoke to you on the subject ? ” 

“ Never.” 


92 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


“ She was willing that Miss Gray should be her 
nurse ? ” 

“ Quite.” 

There was no ill-feeling between your wife and 
Miss Gray ? ” 

“ Emphatically none, between Miss Gray and Mrs. 
Norton, but a great deal between Mrs. Norton and 
Miss Gray.” 

“ You mean ” 

“ That Miss Gray came to this house not knowing 
that she was going to nurse my wife at all. That 
she remained — ^when she did find out the truth — 
out of pure pity and goodness, Mrs. Norton’s temper 
being such that no ordinary nurse would remain with 
her.” 

I saw the men’s eyes turn away with disgust 
from him to the witch’s face on the pillow, and I 
knew that they did not believe him ; more, that they 
positively hated him for saying it. 

“ When did you last see Mrs. Norton?” was the 
next question. 

“ I wished her good-night late in the afternoon — 
as usual. 1 seldom visited her room in the evening.” 

“And you did not see her again till you were 
called to find her dead next morning ? ” 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


93 


“No.” 

Lydia’s pale eyes met mine. I nodded a little as if 
to say: “You hear?” but not a muscle of her face 
moved. 

“ You parted on perfectly good terms with Mrs. 
Norton?” 

“ Quite.” 

“ And knowing that she was jealous of Miss Gray, 
you thought it a desirable thing to retain that young 
lady in the house ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“Your wife was completely paralyzed in body ? ” 

“ Completely.” 

“ Absolutely incapable of lifting a finger, nrnch less 
of administering poison to herself.” 

“ Absolutely.” 

“ You parted with her on perfectly good terms that 
night?” 

“ I had not seen her since the afternoon ; we were 
on good terms then.” 

“ You never discussed Miss Gray with her ? ” 

“ Never — save as a nurse, but Mrs. Norton seldom 
spoke kindly of anyone.” 

The next witness called was Lydia Small. 

She had been the sole person admitted to the 


94 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


room save Kurse Gray, the doctor and Mr. Norton. 
Mrs. Norton disliked servants and hated to he looked 
at or addressed by one ; so there was no conversa- 
tion between them. She simply brought up the 
food, kept the room clean and so on, but did not 
even make Mrs. Norton’s bed — that was done by 
the nurse. Mrs. Norton was a “ difficult ” lady to 
live with. Had often heard her railing at Nurse 
Gray, the only nurse who would ever remain with 
her. Had never seen anything wrong between Mr. 
Norton and Nurse Gray, for the simple reason that 
she had never seen them together. 

Asked if Mr. Norton ever came to the room at 
night, she said he might have done, without her 
knowing it. 

Respectful, stolid, matter of fact, the woman gave 
her evidence simply yet so convincingly that all felt 
she was speaking the truth. Judge then of the un- 
expectedness of the bomb she threw when she said 
quietly : 

“ It wasn’t Miss Gray who did it at all, but some- 
body who got in when her back was turned, and 
hid himself behind the screen.” 

“ Himself ? ” said the coroner, quickly. 

“Yes, sir.” 


/ 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


95 


And she looked full at Hardress with eyes that 
said, 

“ Thou art the man.” 

The gleam of independence flashing as it were out 
of the soul of the bond- woman electrified us all for 
a moment, then I sprang up, crying out, 

“ It is a lie ! I killed her — there is the bottle to 
prove it, and the room was empty when I locked 
the door that night. Take me away, punish me, for 
I am guilty ” 

“ She doesn’t know what she’s talking about, 
gentlemen,” I heard Lydia’s calm voice say from 
a great way off. “ She was fairly worn out with 
Mrs. Norton’s tantrums long before this happened. 
The person that wr»te the letters most like knew 
where they were to be found, and why shouldn’t he 
know where the poison was too ? ” 

“How do you know I kept them together?” I 
heard another voice say that sounded like mine, 
“ and Mr. Norton knew nothing about it, and could 
not possibly have been in the room that night.” 

But I knew as I gazed at the faces around me that 
Lydia’s words had taken effect, and that for the 
first time a possibility of my innocence had crossed 
these men’s minds. 


96 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


“ Where was the screen,” said the coroner. 

“In front of the door opening into the next 
room.” 

“ But the outside door was locked,” I cried out. “ I 
locked both doors before going to bed — Mrs. Norton 
always insisted on it.” 

“Did you go out of the room at all that night, 
miss,” said Lydia, with an odd persistence, “ after 
I’d brought up the things for the night ? ” 

I put my hand to my head — trying to remember. 
It was curious how the woman commanded all our 
attention. 

“Yes,” I said slowly. “ I had written a letter to 
the matron of the hospital, had forgotten to give it 
to you for post, and seeing it after you had gone, 
ran down the front staircase and put it in the hall, 
knowing that it would go the first thing in the 
morning.” 

“ What time was that ? ” inquired the coroner. 

“ The clock struck twelve as I returned.” 

“ The gas was alight in the hall ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ You saw no one ?” 

“ No one.” 

“ And you did not look behind the screen ? ” 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


97 


« No.” 

A juror here remarked that all these remarks 
seemed to him irrelevant, as I had confessed to the 
murder. 

“ Under a delusion,” struck in Hardress Norton, 
“ bred by fatigue, anxiety and inanition.” 

“ A delusion amply corroborated by proofs,” con- 
tinued the juror stolidly. 

“You have none,” said Hardress, impatiently, 
“ but a packet of letters written years ago and dis- 
honestly filched from Miss Gray by someone in 
Mrs. Norton’s confidence, and an empty bottle that 
may have been — must have been emptied by the 
same confederate. If you want to find the real 
murderer,” and he lifted his hand to point at Lydia, 
“you will inquire into the doings of this woman 
that night.” 

Lydia had been standing all the while, and she 
looked at her master with eyes and features expres- 
sionless as though carved in stone. 

“Why don’t you own up to it, sir,” she said, 
“ and save the young lady? ” 

It was an incredible speech to issue from the lips 
of a respectable, respectful serving- woman, but it 
seemed to me, if not to the others who heard her. 


98 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


that some great passion, of either love or hate or 
despair had nerved her to utter it. 

Hardress left the question unanswered, hut ap- 
peared neither astonished nor angry. He regarded 
her as my partisan, and therefore with favor, and 
probably his indifference to the wild accusation 
spoke in his favor, for the jury appeared to attach 
no importance whatever to it, but a very great deal 
to the evidence against me. 

And so it befell that I found myself committed for 
trial at the next assizes on the charge of wilful 
murder by poison of Sabine Norton, and that night, 
I slept in jail. 


V£:j!^us victbix. 


99 


CHAPTER IX. 

“ O my tower is very liigh, 

It’s weel walled round about 
My feet are in the fetters strang 
And how can I get out ? ” 

In this only was Heaven merciful to me, that my 
trial was to come on very soon, and that I had not 
the tortures of hope and fear to undergo, for the 
result was a foregone conclusion, and the task of 
defending me was one of such mockery that Har- 
dress had found it difficult to persuade anyone to 
accept it. 

Money will do much, but it will not inspire con- 
fidence in a hopeless undertaking, and Mr. Surenna, 
who was preparing the case for the great Q. C., 
Mr. James, did not even attempt to affect any, though 
he was Hardress Norton’s most intimate friend. 
He thoroughly believed my own version of the affair, 
that I had killed her indeed, but by misadventure, 
and without any conscious knowledge that I was 
committing a crime; but he was perfectly aware 


100 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


that no judge or jury would accept this merciful 
view of my conduct, so that even if T pleaded guilty 
to manslaughter it was doubtful if it would avail 
me much or prevent my being found guilty on the 
capital charge. 

He had gone exhaustively into every tittle of evi- 
dence for and against me, had subjected Lydia to 
the most searching cross-examination without elicit- 
ing a scrap of anything that could be twisted into 
evidence that she was in any way connected with 
the night’s business, and was indeed convinced that 
she had an infatuated sort of attachment for me that 
would make her swear black white if by doing so 
there was a chance of saving me. 

There was one circumstance and only one that 
suggested a strange hand in the night’s work. A 
pearl and diamond pendant valued at £500 was miss- 
ing from her jewel case, and although to those who 
believed me guilty of murder the attendant circum- 
stance of theft only made me a trifle blacker than 
before, I, who knew my own innocence, could not 
but ponder as to whose hand could possibly have 
removed it from the cabinet close beside her, and in 
which Mrs. Norton’s jewels were kept. 

Still, I did not agree with Mr. Surenna in his view 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


101 


of the woman’s character. I had taken too little 
notice of her, regarded her too indifferently to in- 
spire her with liking for me, and although one 
woman might feel intense pity for another placed 
in my position, such pity did not account for her 
becoming my violent partisan to the extent of ac- 
cusing an innocent man. 

And yet, the servant with whom Lydia slept, the 
others in whose company she rushed, half-dressed, 
downstairs when the mad pealing of my bell woke 
them, all bore witness that she could not have been 
in the locked room that night, and everything went 
to support my own theory as to what really hap- 
pened. 

And yet — and yet instinct told me that Lydia 
knew something that I did not — that I probably 
never should know, as if she had been able to keep 
silence till now, she would probably continue to 
do so till the end. And it seemed to me incredible 
that 1 should have placed my cherished letters 
beside Sabine Norton, and I told Mr. Surenna so. 

“ The letters were the last thing in your mind 
that night— the letters and the fact that you might 
at any moment be called up to administer a sleeping 
draught,” he said, “and probably you supposed 


102 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


yourself to be putting the letters away when you 
placed them beside her, just as - you automatically 
gave her the poison instead of the draught. The 
only loophole of doubt is — whether the door you 
locked overnight was found locked in the morning 
— the second door, I mean — leading to the other 
room. 

“ I can’t tell,” I said, thinking hard. “ People were 
rushing in and out, and I never thought of doors or 
locks, but of course I unlocked the one leading on the 
corridor by which they all came in. I am only posi- 
tive that I locked both when I went to bed. Has 
it ever struck you,” I added, “that unknown to 
me, Lydia and Mrs. Horton may have been on con- 
fidential terms, and that in some way unknown to 
us, she made Lydia her instrument ? That was my 
indelible impression when I saw her dead — that by 
some manner of means she had contrived her own 
death, so that suspicion should fall on me, and 
so ” 

I paused. 

“And so you and Mr. Horton would be forever 
divided,” said Mr. Surenna calmly, “ a fiendish idea 
truly, and one that I should think she would have 
had quite sufficient determination to carry out — if 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


103 


she got the chance. But there are few women who 
would consent to stain themselves with murder, 
even if heavily bribed to do so — ^the risks would be 
too certain, and I should say Lydia Small was the 
last person in the world to run her head into a 
noose to oblige anybody.” 

“ No,” I said wearily, “ I know it’s impossible — 
but the idea is there. It’s in my mind, in my heart, 
and I can’t dislodge it. If Mrs. Norton really knew 
— as Mr. Norton says she did — that I was the woman 
whom he had loved and — and still regretted, her 
jealousy was so intense, her passions were so violent, 
that she would have gloried in a deed that entailed 
such awful consequences on him and me.” 

Mr. Surenna shook his head. 

“ She was a woman who hated and feared death,” 
he said, “ and she could have turned you out and 
kept him — for by every law of humanity he was 
bound to her — to the end of the chapter. And she 
might have lived for years.” 

He was walking irritably up and down the narrow 
cell, with the irritability of a strong man whose 
strength is absolutely useless. 

“You have had a rough time,” he said, “ a very 
rough time indeed. Have you no friends at all ? ” 


104 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


“ None. My mother died — ^thank God — ^just after 
Mr. Norton’s marriage — and there was no one else. 
I was on the groimd, and I dragged myself up first 
to my hands, then to my knees, then to my feet, 
and at last stood erect, only to be struck down once 
more — to this. God puts a little black cross against 
some people from their birth — there is one against 
me.” 

“You don’t deserve it,” said Mr. Surenna. 
“ Tongues may lie, but faces never, and you’ve got a 
brave and a good and a sweet little face of your own, 
Lyndsay Gray. Norton was a fool — a fool — ^but, of 
course, as usual, the woman pays the piper. He 
never cared a button for any woman in the world 
but you — and if I knew him less well, I should say 
that he did it himself, and you were screening him.” 

“ How could that be so,” I said sadly, “ when I did 
not even know that he had recognized me? We 
were not face to face more than twice the whole 
time I was in the house.” 

“More scamp he to let you stay, knowing the risk 
you ran,” growled Mr. Surenna. “ But he’s richly 
paid now.” 

“Yes,” I said, with trembling lips, “his punish- 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


105 


4 

ment will go on, while mine — ends. After all, God 
is more merciful to me than to him. When — when 
it is all over, I will wish him good-bye.” 

“You wont see him before?” said Mr. Surenna, 
who was buttoning up his overcoat. 

“ No, only to say good-bye. Why do you beheve 
in me?” I added almost fiercely, “No one else does 
— perhaps even Hardress in his heart does not think 
so — only he is one of those men who would stick to 
you through thick and thin.” 

Mr. Surenna shook his head. 

“ If he saw you do it, he wouldn’t beheve it,” he said. 
I never saw a man so hard hit over a woman as 
Norton is over you. There’s only one thing,” he 
added, with a sudden change of subject, “that I 
think bears out in the slightest degree your suspi- 
cion of Lydia SmaU. She has a lover. And as in all 
doubtful matters pertaining to men, you cherchez la 
femmey so in all obscure affairs to do with maid- 
servants you should cherchez Vhomme, I met her in 
the most out of the way place at a most unusual hour 
— and the man with her was an unmitigated scamp, 
who could not but leave his mark on her life. And 
yet I don’t see what hand he could have had in what 
happened that night.” 


106 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


“ Nor I,” I said, with the mditference of despair. 
But I had looked too long at death and suffering to be 
terrified as some women might be at the appearance 
of fate, and my chief longing now was to get it over 
— and rest. 

“ I wouldn’t tell you before,” said Mr. Surenna, 
“ for fear of raising false hopes, but I followed the 
man, and a detective is following up the clue. If 
the diamond and pearl pendant that was missing 
from Mrs. Norton’s jewels could be traced to him, 
we should have a pretty strong case against Lydia 
Small, in spite of her alibi. Only time is short and 
if anything is going to save you it must be done 
soon.” 

“It won’t,” I said bitterly. “Providence never 
helped me, luck never favored me yet — and it won’t 
now. The few persons who took any interest in me 
opposed, tooth and nail, my training for a nurse, 
and every possible obstacle was put in my path ; 
whatever I have done has been accomplished 
by sheer dogged determination. Such struggles 
strengthen a woman’s character, no doubt, but they 
also harden it.” 

Mr. Surenna shook his head. 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


107 


“ It would soon soften again if it got the chance,” 
he said, then took my hand in his big one. I felt en- 
veloped for the moment by the strong masculine 
presence, then he was gone. 


108 


VENUS VICTRIS. 


CHAPTER X. 

“ My garters are of the gude black iron, 

And oh ! but they be cold ; 

My breist plate is o’ the sturdy steel 
Instead o’ the beaten gold.” 

All things come {o an end, and ray trial and con- 
viction went with velvet-like smoothness and de- 
spatch. The social fame and position of the murdered 
woman made the case one of great interest ; and the 
circumstances as unrolled by the public prosecutor 
revealed me in a light that the worst of my sex 
might have shrunk from facing, and that I did not 
so shrink was accounted another proof of my callous- 
ness. Under the guise of a nurse I had sneaked 
into my lover’s house, presumably to contmue guilty 
relations with him, while I had carefully hid my 
identity from the paralyzed wife who was absolutely 
dependent upon me, and whose very helplessness 
might have appealed to a heart of stone, while 
the pathos of her tragic fate, struck down in the 
very bloom of youth and bounding life would surely 


VENUS VICTRIX. 109 

have appealed to any woman who did not merci- 
lessly hate her. 

Step by step the old ground was gone over, and 
everything like a dexterously handled puzzle fell into 
its place, making a perfect whole. Time, place, op- 
portunity, motive, the evidence of the empty bottle 
of poison, the almost equally damning evidence of 
the letters, all followed each other in harmonious 
sequence, and the only incident whose meaning was 
not patent to the meanest understanding was the 
incident of the missing pendant, for I could just 
as easily have stolen a dozen jewels as one. 

“ This poor lady’s life,” continued counsel, “ stood 
between these two people and their guilty passion, 
and while the man wished it taken, the woman took 
it. They could not even wait till nature mercifully 
released her from her living death — she was in their 
way, and she must go. Yet, such as it was, life 
may have been sweet to her, so ardently do mortals 
cling to existence under even almost impossible 
conditions, and without a prayer, without a good- 
bye, with God knows what frenzied cry for mercy, 
she was thrust into the presence of her Maker. 
A more cowardly crime, or a more clumsily con- 
ceived and executed one, it would be impossible to 


110 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


conceive. Her overpowering, mad haste to be rid 
of her rival seems to have been the dominant idea 
of the prisoner’s mind, or possibly she thought 
the husband would bring such powerful influence 
to bear on the doctor’s mind that her death would 
be attributed to a final stroke of paralysis, and no 
inquiry would be held. 

“ It is evident,” he said in conclusion, “ to the 
meanest observation that the accused is a woman 
of great nerve, self-control or reticence — as witness 
her demeanor in the dock this day. Not a tremor 
of fear, doubt, or hope crosses her face, and the 
youth and softness of her lineaments only make 
more apparent the callousness of the spirit that 
animates her. 

I looked up and met Hardress’s eyes. Involun- 
tarily, and perhaps because it was the worst thing 
I could possibly have done, I smiled, and he smiled 
back at me. 

The court faded, the man’s biting voice was but 
dumb show, Hardress was mine — mine — and we 
loved one another, body and heart and soul. I 
should see him once more before I died — he would 
hold me in his arms, and we would forget everything 
— everything but that we loved, that we must 


VENUS VICTEIX. 


Ill 


always love, and together we would ask God to 
grant us an hereafter in which we might be happy. 

The witnesses, and they were few, came and went 
rapidly. 

No new facts were elicited, and when Lydia Small 
was taxed with being seen under unusual circum- 
stances with a man of doubtful character, she at 
once admitted it, and said he was her brother-in- 
law, whom she occasionally befriended for her sister’s 
sake. And with her departure from the box went 
my last chance. 

I scarcely heard Mr. James’s speech for my defence. 
It was ably delivered, no doubt — but it had no raison 
(Tetre, and convinced nobody. He simply threw the 
onus of proving my guilt on the prosecutor, and the 
prosecutor had done so. His view of my character 
as a woman who had remained to nurse my rival out 
of motives of pure humanity was received with a 
chilling air of doubt that might have dashed a more 
stout-hearted champion than he, and I could not 
but feel sorry for him from the bottom of my soul 
when at last he ceased, and sat down. 

The judge made short worjj: of the summing up, 
which was dead against me, and the jury made of 
theirs, even shorter. 


112 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


It was still broad daylight when I heard addressed 
to me those most moving, solemn, terrible words that 
one human being can convey to another, the message, 
the hope of the innocent for the guilty, the prayer 
to God for that mercy which is denied to mortal 
lips to utter. I bowed my head as I heard them, 
making my own plea for pity, for forgiveness, and 
then they led me away. 


VENUS VICTEIX. 


iia 


CHAPTER XI. 

“ Sin’ I am standin’ here,” she says, 

“ This dowie death to dee. 

One kiss o’ your comlie mouth, 

I’m sure wad comfort me.” 

So strong was the feeling against me and Hardress, 
that only with great difficulty could he obtain per- 
mission to see me once more, and I fixed the date of 
our interview for the night before the end. 

A jailer would be present — but what matter? 
We had surely bought and paid for the right of one 
hour together, and it was more of that hour I 
thought than of what was to come, during the days 
that followed my conviction. 

And now it had come to the very last day but 
one and I was happy — as a man is before he has 
grasped his morsel of happiness — not after, when 
I heard the heavy bolts of my door unbarred, and 
sprang up in fear. 


8 


114 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


Had he refused to wait any longer, was I indeed 
to go out into the great darkness, unwarmed, un- 
succored by his recent touch and love ? If I could 
only fed the clinging of his hand when I went, it 
would be nothing. 

The door swung hack, it was Lydia. 

“ You can have just twenty minutes,” said the jailer, 
sitting down as far off as possible and unfolding a 
newspaper, in which he appeared immediately im- 
mersed. 

I waited for the woman to come up to me — ^to 
speak, hut she stood by the door, and when I looked 
more closely at her I saw that she had aged at least 
ten years since the day of my trial, and that even 
her bonnet was carelessly put on, and her cloak 
awry, and on her whole appearance was stamped 
that look of guilty shame that the merest child 
understands without knowing why. 

I knew it all then, that in some way she had 
killed Mrs. Norton, and that she had come here at 
the eleventh hour to tell me so, and in a second I 
passed out of the cold shadow of death into the sun- 
lit garden of life. 

“ Poor woman, poor soul,” I said, and put my arms 
roimd her trembling body as she tottered towards 


VENUS VICTBIX, 


115 


me, and then she broke down, weeping wildly and 
convulsively on my shoulder. 

The turnkey just glanced at her, then back to his 
paper. He found it more interesting. 

She soon pulled herself together, and wiped her 
eyes with something of the old stolid calm that had 
always distinguished her. 

I drew her as far as possible away from the third 
person present, and we sat down side by side. 

“ Tell me all about it,” I said. 

Lydia drew a deep breath and folded her large 
hands, covered with black cotton gloves, on her lap. 

“ From the beginning, miss ? ” she said, wearily. 
“ I’ve tried to piece it all together in my mind, and 
I can’t rightly recollect how it began, but I think 
’twas when she followed me about with her eyes, 
kind-like, when I was doing the room, and one day 
when your back was turned she smiled at me, and 
you know, miss, there was no resisting her smile, 
man or woman, ’twas all one — and I was a fool like 
the rest, and thought perhaps she wasn’t so bad after 
all, and she’d a deal to suffer. And so it went on, 
she giving me kinder and kinder looks, till one day 
when you were out, I happened to go up for some- 
thing, and she called me to her and said I didn’t 


116 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


look strong and I had better have some port wine 
every day, and she would tell Mr. Norton to see that 
the butler gave it to me. 

“ She didn’t say any more then except that I wasn’t 
to speak to her except when she addressed me, ‘ or 
nurse will be jealous,’ she said, and laughed, and 
you know she was a witch, miss, and when she 
laughed it got into your head like wine, and she 
could do anything with you she pleased. After that 
I often went up when you were out — and sometimes 
she’d send you on errands at a distance, to get new 
books and so on, and many an hour I sat beside her, 
always getting away before your knock and ring 
came, and always taking care that Mr. Norton never 
found us talking together.” 

Lydia paused and drew a long, weary breath. 
“ She was so clever, miss, you know, and I was such 
a fool. She asked me about my family — it was 
wonderful the interest she took in our humble 
affairs — so I thought then — ^but I know better now. 
Very soon she found out that the trouble of my life 
was my young sister’s husband, a ne’er-do-well who 
broke up the home as fast as she made it, and who 
was the curse of her life and the poor little children 
whom he hated because they were mouths to feed. 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


117 


But he’d got his friends, and one of them wrote 
from Australia saying that if he went out there 
with a few hundreds in his pocket, his fortune would 
be made, and I believe the man spoke the truth, and 
Simon was wild to go, and heat his wife and the chil- 
dren more than ever because he couldn’t, and Milly 
was getting that desperate I shouldn’t have won- 
dered any day to be fetched to her drowned body — 
for that’s the way most poor, desperate women come 
to an end. 

“ I didn’t tell Mrs. Norton all this at first, for things 
weren’t so bad then, hut they got worse faster and 
faster after she’d condescended to notice and talk to 
me. One day she said to me, quite sharp and sud- 
den like, 

“ ‘ Lydia, do you think Nurse is pretty ?’ 

“ ‘ I said I thought you were a douce little body, 
miss, hut not a beauty, for who could be a beauty 
anywhere near her ? Even her temper couldn’t spoil 
her looks. 

“ ‘ Do you think she is the sort of person a man 
would admire ? ’ she said, her breath coming very 
quick and fast, so that I knew she was angry. 

“I said I didn’t know — men had such strange 
fancies — and that seemed to anger her more. 


118 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


“ ‘ I’ll tell you one person who admires her,’ she 
said in a breathless sort of way, ‘ and that’s Mr. 
Norton ! ’ 

“ ‘ Oh, no, ma’am ! ’ I said, quite shocked ; ‘ he 
never sees her hardly.’ 

“ ‘ Yes, he does,’ she said ; and then looking at me 
very strangely, she added, ‘ I never asked the crea- 
ture her name — what is it ? ’ 

“ I told her it was Gray — Lyndsay Gray. 

“ ‘ So, I was right,’ she said, after she had lain a 
long time with a look that frightened me on her 
white face, and her blue eyes — you know how in- 
tensely blue they were, miss — staring ahead of her, 
‘ and it is a plot between him and her — and I am 
mocked — mocked.’ 

“ I didn’t know what to say — I thought ’twas all 
fancy on her part — she having so little to think 
about and all — and worshipping, as she did, the very 
ground Mr. Norton trod on. 

“ ‘ What a fool,’ she said presently in a loud voice, 
‘ what a doting fool, never to have suspected it, and 
if I hadn’t caught his look at her. . . . They were 
engaged once, I tell you, engaged to be married. 
And he loved her — not me.’ 

“ I couldn’t but be sorry for her, miss, there was 


VENU^^ VICTBIX. 


119 


such agony in her face, and she so helpless, lying 
there, and you able to run nimbly about, and please 
yourself in most things — and my sympathy goes 
with the wives, miss, and not with the other ones. 
They get enough sympathy from the men. I mean 
no harm, miss, but you’ll admit things look black 
against you.” 

She paused again for a while, as if anxious to say 
something in apology, but after a glance or two at 
me went on again, 

“Of course she saw that I was sorry for her. 
And without her saying a word, or me either, it was 
somehow understood that we were to watch you and 
outwit you if we could. I begged her to send you 
away — but she wouldn’t — and said she meant to 
punish you first — though, God is my witness, I little 
knew how. Well, miss, we both watched, and all I 
could find out was that master watched you out and 
in, but I couldn’t see that you ever had a word with 
him, and when she wanted to send you on messages 
to him, you wouldn’t go, but always called me, so I 
thought you were deep, very deep, and T took her 
part all the more. This went on for some weeks, 
and meanwhile my scamp of a brother-in-law was 
behaving worse than ever. I sometimes thought 


120 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


that Mrs. ^^orton, being such a rich lady, might have 
made me a present, besides being so sympathizing, 
but one day she called me to her and said : 

“ ‘ What money does that wretch want for going 
abroad ? ’ 

“ I told her three or four hundred pounds. 

If I had it I’d give it to you,’ she said in her off- 
hand way, just as if she were a queen, you know, 
miss, ‘ but Mr. Norton would be angry with me for 
throwing money away like that. You see the 
money’s hi^ not mine.’ 

“ I said of course he would, and I never dreamed 
of such a thing as her giving it to me. 

“ She lay for a good bit thinking and looking at 
me, then she said : 

“ ‘My jewels are my own. If I gave you one of 
those you could turn it into money.’ 

“ I said I couldn’t take it — folks would call it rob- 
bery, and I might get into trouble. 

“ ‘ Stuff,’ she said, then thought a bit longer, and 
said : 

“ ‘ I’m not such a fool as to help you for nothing. 
If I get your precious brother-in-law out of the 
country, you’ll have to do something to please me."* 

“ I felt myself tremble as I asked what it was. 


VENUS VICTBIX, 


121 


“ ‘ A mere trifle,’ she said. ‘ I want you to bring 
me the desk in which Nurse Gray keeps her private 
papers. You must then take an impression of the 
seal in wax. You must obtain a key to fit that 
impression. And then — when I have sent her out 
of the way for a good two or three hours — you are 
to read me everything that desk contains.’ 

“ It seemed to me a mean trick, and at flrst I said 
I wouldn’t. 

“ ‘ Then you don’t have the four hundred pounds,’ 
she said, coolly. ‘ Think it over. The day you 
bring me the open desk and read me the letters, I 
give you an ornament to the value of five hundred 
pounds (it cost seven), so make up your mind.’ 

“ I did make up my mind in less than twenty -four 
hours, and within two days I had unlocked the desk 
and was sitting beside Mrs. Norton, holding up the 
letters one by one before her eyes that she might 
read them. I saw a word here and there, enough to 
show me master had loved you dearly, miss, and I 
thought many a time she would have choked with 
jealousy and rage and misery before she’d come to 
the end of them. 

“ ‘ The brown mouse,’ she said to herself, over and 
over again, and when you came home that day, 


122 


VENUS VICTEIX. 


miss, if she hadn’t shut her eyes when you came 
near, I believe they’d have killed you. I was bring- 
ing in the tea — and I couldn’t help seeing. 

“ After that she and I watched you and him as cats 
watch mice. But we couldn’t ever find anything 
out. And whenever you were away she made me 
hold the letters before me, and she’d quote little bits 
out of them and laugh like mad, and sometimes I 
thought she was going mad, but didn’t know it. 
She’d given me the diamond and pearl pendant, with 
a letter she dictated to me saying she’d given it to 
me, and she made me put the pencil between her 
teeth, and scrawled her signature, and, more than 
that, she promised to tell her husband later on that 
she’d given it to me, and like the fool that I was, I 
believed her, and never dreamed that she was mak- 
ing a catspaw of me, not caring if through doing her 
bidding I came to be hanged by the neck some day. 
And that’s what I’ve got to come to, miss. And all 
for a brother-in-law and a female Judas.” 

I looked at the turnkey. His eyes were still fixed 
on the paper, but they were stationary. 

“ I got the jewel sold — no matter how — and got 
four hundred and fifty pounds for it. I got a man 
of business, who’d been kmd to my family, to take 


VENUS VICTIilX. 


123 


the scamp’s passage, get him an outfit, and leave 
him something for his pocket going out, and the 
rest of the money, all but a little I kept for Milly 
and the children, was sent out to the man who had 
wanted him to come. To tell the whole truth, it 
was a man who had been in love with Milly that 
wanted to save him, and the money was all safe 
with him. But at the last minute Tom went on the 
spree with every farthing he had, and refused to go 
to Australia at all. But that was after what hap- 
pened that night. Only I got no reward for my 
sin — that’s all — or Milly any benefit either. lie’ll 
go some day perhaps — after the money — but he’ll 
kill Milly first.” 

“You have spoken of the letters,” I said, “but 
what of the poison I put away in the desk with 
them ? ” 

“ I didn’t know it was poison. Mrs. Norton saw it, 
of course, when I unlocked the box before her eyes, 
and she told me to uncork it and hold it to her nose. 
I did so — and noticed a smell of bitter almonds, but 
didn’t know what it meant.” 

“ ‘ Cork it up,’ she said coolly. ‘ So Miss Lyndsay 
takes sleeping draughts, does she ? And gets her bot- 
tle refilled every afternoon when she goes out. Sly ! ” 


124 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


“ I thought no more of the bottle, but I got weary 
of standing up holding those letters before her face, 
till she must have known every word of them by 
heart. And I saw how every day a black, bitter 
rage against you grew, and at last she used to say, 
over and over again, ‘ They are waiting for me to die 
then they’ll rush into each other’s arms, and I shall 
be dead — as much forgotten as if I had never lived 
to come between them. Think of it,’ she would say, 
clutching my arm, ‘ think of me down there, and 
those two above with warmth, light, movement, 
music, health, love — and all the world for their pleas- 
ure-ground ! I would live in torture till I was a 
hundred if I could, just to keep them apart — ^but I 
shall not — another stroke may come at any moment, 
and I shall die.’ 

The turnkey looked at his watch. The twenty 
minutes were up, but he did not interfere. 

“ I think she was always brooding over it — how 
after she was dead she could make it impossible for 
you to marry, and I believe she had made up her 
mind for some time — and it was a devilish . plot 
enough — how she could do it. I fell into the trap, 
being taken on the hop like — and that’s how most 
foolish and wicked things come about in this world, 


VENUS VICTRIX. 125 

for if one only knew, one would have guarded against 
them.” 

The woman stopped for a moment, and still I did 
not see how she could have done this thing, not 
knowing, and I waited eagerly for more. 

“ But I’ve often wondered since, miss, that you 
didn’t suspect she knew something — only you never 
seemed to think the worst she would put on you 
was anything but just her wicked temper — but 
she’d never look you in the face latterly, miss — did 
you notice that ? or you’d have known. And you 
were real good to her. To see you dressing up her 
poor head every day, and all for him — to whom she 
was just poison, and bearing with her as nobody 
else would, well, miss, I just thought you were an 
angel, or else that you’d a reason for doing it best 
known to yourself. She always swore that there 
was an understanding between you and him, and set 
me to watch you both, but I never saw anything 
wrong, miss — and I don’t believe you’re so much to 
blame in coming there as people say.” 

“ I did not know who I was going to nurse even 
till I got there,” I said, impatiently, “ nor that Mr. 
Norton recognized me — but that’s of no consequence. 
On with your story.” 


126 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


“ Well, she was very cunning, as I say, miss, and 
she kept her own counsel. It never crossed my mind 
that the stuff in that bottle was poison — her say- 
ing it was a sleeping draught put me quite off it — 
and I had brought it to her almost dozens of times 
with the letters, and she never seemed to take any 
notice of it. But I know now what she meant all 
the while, and how she’d made up her mind to do it, 
sooner or later. And what might happen to me 
didn’t trouble her in the least. All she wanted was 
to die in such a way that the guilt would fall on 
you — and so you would be hanged. And she made 
sure I wouldn’t speak for my own sake — for by my 
being so sly towards you, she thought, no doubt, I 
was a right down bad one, but there she was wrong. 
I allow I oughtn’t to have let her give me that 
jewel unbeknown to master, and I was a sneak and 
coward to you, miss, but I never meant you any 
harm, and she couldn’t do you any either lying 
there — or so, I thought. And after all if you’d 
woke up, miss, when I came for the sleeping 
draught 

“Then there was some mistake after all?” I 
cried, starting up in wild excitement. 

“ There was my mistake, miss, but none on your 


v:enus victrix. 


127 


part — ^it was all planned and thought out days and 
weeks before — ^yet it all fell out as natural and 
accidental-like as possible. 

“ I’d got into a way of often stepping into her room 
for a minute, even when you weren’t far off, and 
that night, when you went down to put your letter 
on the hall table, I was passing her door, when she 
called me in. I just stepped inside and put my 
finger on my lips, meaning you’d be back in a min- 
ute, but she said ‘ Come in ; she’s gone to post her 
precious letter herself,’ — and as I hadn’t seen you 
go down, I believed her, especially as just then the 
front door shut, and went forward into the room. 
I’d just got opposite the screen before the folding 
doors into the other room, when I heard you sneeze — 
almost on the threshold, and I’d barely shot behind 
the screen and kneeled down when you came in. You 
locked the door after you, and then began to settle 
Mrs. Norton for the night. I felt sure you’d come 
presently to see if the folding doors were safe and 
catch me, but I was too frightened to move, and as it 
turned out, you had locked them earlier in the even- 
ing, and at last you went to bed. I thought I 
heard you unlock the writing-case first, and the 
rustling of papers, but you were a long way off, 


128 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


and I couldn’t be sure. I heard what she said about 
the sleeping draught, and how she would call you if 
she wanted it. And then — after a Ipng while, it 
seemed to me, as I kneeled there all cramped up, I 
heard your regular breathing and I knew you 
were asleep. But I was still afraid to move until 
Mrs. Norton called me very softly from the distance, 
to go to her. 

“ ‘ I’d better go, ma’am,’ I whispered back, ‘ she 
may wake up any moment,’ — ^but she insisted in her 
breathless, passionate way and with my knees knock- 
ing under me, I stole over the soft carpet to her bed. 
She was laughing when I came near, but it was 
wicked mirth, and her eyes loked so strange they 
frightened me. 

“ ‘ Oh, ma’am,’ I said, ‘ how could you tell me such 
a story, to say she’d gone out ? ’ 

“ ‘ I didn’t,’ she said boldly. ‘ She said something 
about taking a letter to post, and I can’t see from 
here when she puts her bonnet on — and I wanted 
to see you, Lyddy,’ she said in that coaxing way 
she could put on sometimes, for all that she was 
such a queen. 

“‘You might have got me into a fine bother, 
ma’am,’ I said reproachfully, but she only laughed 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


129 


again, and there was something reckless in her 
laugh, and a sort of fear too, like a man who puts 
his horse at a leap he knows will kill him, but does 
it all the same, though life’s sweet and he loves it. 

“ ‘ Now you’re here you must stop a minute or 
two, ’ she said coolly, and then she seemed to draw a 
deep breath and said, ‘ I want my sleeping draught. 
You may as well give it me.’ 

“ ‘ How could I do that, ma’am,’ I said in a 
whisper, ‘when she’d find the bottle to-morrow 
morning and know that somebody must have been 
here to give it to you ? ’ 

“ ‘ Can’t you take the bottle away with you, you 
fool ? ’ she said so savagely I jumped hack from her 
as if she might bite. 

“ ‘ I don’t know where that idiot has put it,’ she 
went on, quite careless-like. ‘ Do you see it about 
anywhere ? ’ 

“ I looked among the things on the table close by, 
and saw a narrow, smallish bottle with some color- 
less stuff in it, and brought it to her. 

“ ‘ That’s not it,’ she said irritably. ‘ Probably she 
has taken it into her place, so as to have it handy 
when I call her. Go and see ! ’ 

“ ‘ Ma’am,’ I said trembling, ‘ I durstn’t. If she 
woke up, the fright ’ud kill me.’ 


130 


VENUS VICTBIX, 


“ She looked at me, and in the dim light I saw her 
eyes, just like a devil’s. 

“ ‘ If you don’t,’ she said deliberately, ‘ I’ll call 
out to her, and I’ll swear you came to rob, perhaps 
to murder me, and that you stole the pendant I gave 
you.’ 

I gasped at her wickedness — ^but I was frightened, 
and I wanted to get away, and by now I knew she 
was capable of anything. 

“ ‘ I’ll go,’ I said, shaking in every limb, and I stole 
across the room and looked over the top of the 
screen. You were deep in your first sleep. There 
was no small bottle on the cabinet near you, but 
lying on the carpet was one exactly like what I had 
seen in your desk, and which Mrs. ^^'orton had 
declared to be a sleeping draught, and indeed it 
seemed to me to be the very same. 

“ I stole back to her, and it’s come back to me often 
since, though I didn’t think it strange then, that she 
said before I could open my lips, ‘ There’s a draught 
in the desk, anyway — ^I will have it — I wilV 

“ I said, ‘ There’s a bottle lying on the fioor — is that 
the one you wanted ? ’ 

“ Something fiashed into her eyes, it seemed to me 
that even a quiver went through her dead body, and 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


131 


it wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d lifted that 
dead arm of hers and shaken me hard. 

“ ‘ That’s the one I want,’ she said, ‘ bring it here.’ 

“ She said the last words slowly, indifferently, but 
the sweat was standing on her forehead, and it might 
have warned me — but didn’t. Remember, miss, it 
had never crossed my mind there was poison in that 
bottle, or she might have ordered forever, and I 
wouldn’t have brought it. 

“But I lingered a bit. I scarcely knew how. There 
was something about her that frightened me — and 
well there might be, when there was but a slip be- 
tween her and death, right out of everything she 
knew, miss, into something — that she didn’t — and 
not a prayer on her lips. 

“ I went back and fetched the bottle — oh, miss ! 
when I kneeled down beside you — if you’d only 
woke then ! But you slept on and looked so white 
and weary my heart ached for you — twas such a 
different face to the one you brought here first. 

“ I went back to her. When I was close, she said, 
‘ There’s one more thing, Lydia, and you must do 
it. I want the desk ; there’s one letter in it I must 
read over, or I shan’t sleep to-night.’ 

“ ‘ But I can’t, ma’am,’ I said quite worn out. ‘ It’s 


132 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


a mercy I ain't caught as it is, and I should have to 
take two more journeys. You must wake her up if 
you like ’ 

“ ‘ And tell her what a sneak you’ve been to her ? ’ 
she said to me in her cool way. ‘ How she will love 
you ! Go directly, she sleeps like a top.’ 

“Well, I went. I took out the desk, while my 
heart beat like mad, and I brought it to her. I 
found the letter she wanted, and, miss — if ever a 
gentleman loved a lady and knew how to put it into 
words, Mr. Horton loved you. I held the night- 
light close to the page — ^but she knew it all by 
heart, and then she said when I was going to put 
the letters back, 

“ ‘ Put them here beside me while you give me the 
draught.’ 

“ I thought it was nonsense, for I was just mad to 
get away, but at last I lifted the coverlid and put 
the packet inside.” 

“ What became of the desk ? ” I inquired. 

“ It was found after, I suppose, put on one side, 
the women thinking it was hers. I thought you 
would have been sure to see it, miss.” 

I shook my head. I had seen nothing — nothing 
but that dead face on the pillow when I went to her, 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


133 


and the care-women had come in later to do all 
that was necessary. 

“ She lay still after that for about twenty seconds, 
and I thought I heard her mutter master’s name, 
then with something between a long sob and a 
shudder, she said, 

‘ Give me the draught now.’ 

“ ‘ Let me put it in a wineglass,’ I said. 

“ ‘No,’ and she opened her mouth. 

“ I uncorked the bottle close to her face, and poured 
it down. I shall never forget her eyes, miss — Lydia 
covered her own — to my dying day, as I did it. She 
had barely swallowed the draught, and it seemed to 
me a very little one, when her face was convulsed 
with agony, and with a stifled shriek her eyes turned 
to stone — and she was dead. 

“ It all passed in an instant. The bottle slipped 
from my Angers, I was almost as still and frozen as 
she was, and I couldn’t call out any more than she 
could, for my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. 
I was too dazed to think of anything but that ’twas 
my hand that killed her, and I wanted to get out of 
sight of what I’d done. I don’t know to this day 
how I got away — but somehow I did. I unlocked 
the folding doors, I stole upstairs and into bed with 


134 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


Martha, and there I lay trembling till your bell 
pealed, and because I daren’t stay behind, ran down 
with the rest. I hadn’t thought of what I was go- 
ing to do — I was stunned, and as things turned out 
there wasn’t nothing to do — ^but hold my tongue. 
And I held it. But when I saw how ’twas going 
against you after the inquest, I thought it would be 
a good thing to make people suspect master — but 
’twas no good — and you’d got that idea you’d done 
it in your sleep, and you wouldn’t do a thing to help 
yourself. And all along I thought they’d never 
bring it home to you — and I saw how it had been a 
regular plan of hers, getting the letters and all, so as 
to be found when she was dead, I being her tool. 
But they ’victed you, miss — I was in court and 
heard it. And when I thought how but for that 
ne’er-do-well, my sister’s husband, I’d never have 
been led into temptation, or laid the sin of murder 
on my soul, two murders, miss, reckoning yours, if 
you died — I nearly went mad. I was ill for days, 
and not able to come to you — ^but I’m here now, 
miss, to take your place.” 

“No,” I cried, throwing both arms above my 
head, almost delirious with the joy of life, of the 
love beyond, “ it was an accident — ^they cannot even 


VENUS VICTRIX, 


135 


punish you, and oh ! thank God, Lydia, thank God ! ” 
and I fell on my knees with prayers and tears. 

The turnkey looked at his watch. 

“ Time’s up,” he said, as calmly as if he were stat- 
ing a fact. “ I suppose you’ll want to see the gov- 
ernor of the jail?” 

“Yes. Good-night, miss. The night’s over for 
you, and the day’s breaking.” 


136 


VENUS VICTBIX. 


CHAPTER XII. 

“ And are ye come at last, and do I hold ye fast ? 

I hae nae time to tell ; but sae lang’s I like mysel 
Sae lang shall I love you.” 

The day might be breaking, but it bad not broken 
yet. 

Lydia Small’s confession was received with doubt, 
so violently had she showed as my partisan through- 
out the whole business, and I knew that many 
people thought it a put-up thing arranged between 
us two women. 

We were examined separately and together, the 
bedroom was viewed, and the scrap of paper signed 
by Sabine Norton’s teeth was rigorously compared 
with her other signatures, with the strange result 
that the letters, however rudely scrawled, were 
found to be shaped precisely in her usual way. Ap- 
parently it is the spirit, not the flesh and bone that 


VENUS VICTRIX. 


137 


guides the pen, or it was not probable that Lydia, 
who had never seen her mistress’s handwriting, 
could have forged an imitation of it. 

Then corroborative testimony came from Milly, 
the sister for whom Lydia had virtually sold her 
soul, and the poor woman’s story was identical, even 
to the smallest detail, with the one Lydia had told 
me ; and the man to whom the jewel had been sold 
also came forward to uphold the truth, which at 
last prevailed, and Lydia stood in my place, so that 
having been royally pardoned for a crime I did not 
commit, I found myself — free. 

Free ! And to go whither ? 

Into Hardress’s arms, longingly held out towards 
me, while good men and women cried shame upon 
me, holding me, if blood-guiltless indeed, guilty of 
that which should make them shim me for ever- 
more? 

'No. But I would not trust myself near him. . . . 
I had fought so long, and I was tired — dead tired, 
and so when the day of my release came, I sent him 
a false message that at a certain hour he was to 
come for me. . . . but long before the hour struck I 
had stolen away. 

Will he find me? Shall we come together with- 


138 


VENUS vicmix. 


out sin or shame, with tired hearts, out of which nor 
years nor fickleness nor grief have been able to 
stamp the living souls of one another ? 

To me, with ears long strained by listening, 
his eager footsteps seem to follow on the pulsing, 

passionate spring and soon I shall be 

overtaken. 


THE END. 



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VENUS VICTRIX 


^ of a TJJoman 


HELEN MATHERS 

AUTHOR OF 

“t’other dear charmer,” “ hedri,” “wrostella’s weird,” etc. 


NEW YORK 

UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY 

5 AND 7 East Sixteenth Street 


Chicago: 266 & 268 Wabash Ave. 


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